Pinus lambertiana

The sugar pine is one of our personal favorite pine species because of its beautiful soft foliage and even growth. Mature trees are decorated with massive pine cones that hang from slightly weeping branches and drop large, edible seeds. Because of the open and drooping branching pattern, Sugar Pines are easy to spot growing on hot and dry hillsides in their native range.

In the landscape, Sugar Pines are very useful because of their drought and heat tolerance as well as slower growth compared to other pine species, which can quickly overshadow all the other plants in your landscape. Even though their eventual size is massive, they are well suited to smaller landscapes and are one of the most popular bonsai trees. Most trees will grow about six inches to one foot per year in height and take well to shaping and pruning in any style garden.

Sugar Pines are members of the White Pine group, which all have needles in groups of five.

Coming Across Massive Sugar Pines in the Wild

After backpacking for several days in the upper drainage of the Applegate, numerous massive Sugar Pine trees started appearing alongside the (almost non-existent) trail that towered over even the largest trees of other species in the forest. This fact was made even more impressive by the fact that the average tree throughout this forest seemed to be at least 100 feet tall - seeing Douglas-fir with diameters of 5-6 feet was actually quite common. But some of these sugar pines seemed to match the size of many large specimens of Coastal Redwood common throughout the coast of Northern California, the tallest of which are famous for being the tallest trees in the world.

These sugar pines must have been larger than at least half of the Coast Redwoods I had ever seen, and the lowest branches of these behemoths didn't start until well above the forest of Chinquapin some 40 feet above the forest floor. Piles of composted pine needles that surrounded the tree appeared to be up to three feet deep, the result of hundreds and perhaps thousands of years of needle drop. The trees truly seemed ancient, slowly growing and persisting through countless floods, droughts, and landslides. Hiking through these valleys for several days, a pattern seemed to appear in where these massive trees would grow. They were always in flat plateaus near the bottom of individual valleys but up against steep hills or cliffs. The steep terrain of the area protected these trees from logging, and the ample snow runoff during the summer months protected them from the severe wildfires common here during drought years.

For the fifteen or so giant Sugar Pine trees that can be found along the trail, these conditions must aligned perfectly to allow the trees to thrive and make a beautiful forest far more so. And after seeing specimens far more impressive than could be put into words, I ordered hundreds of seedlings to grow on and share with others, as well as plant around the nursery.