DIGGER PINES

Earlier I've mentioned that around here the main pine is Ponderosa Pine, and that we say we're "going up to the Sugar Pine zone," and "going down to the Digger Pine zone." I've already covered the Ponderosas and the Sugars, and this week I finally got some good pictures of a Digger Pine and its cone, which now appear at the bottom of my Pine Page at http://www.backyardnature.net/sierras/pines.htm.

The trunks of both Ponderosa and Sugar Pines are monumentally tall and straight. Digger pine trunks typically are crooked and forked, its wood is coarse- grained and warps badly, and the tree itself seldom rises over 60 feet tall. The needles of Ponderosa and Sugar pines are dark green, thick and they clot heavily on the branches. Much in contrast, the Digger's needles are grayish, stiff and slender, giving the tree such an airy, wispy appearance you can hardly find decent shade beneath it. The only other pine I've seen like it is the Caribbean Pine I got to know while living in Belize. That species typically occupied hot, windblown, sandy flats, so it looks like the species' shared features are adaptations to drought, intense sunlight and hot wind.

One wonderful thing about Digger Pines is the oversized cones they produce, and the remarkably large, edible seeds that come from those cones. The seeds were much eaten by the natives, and still are very important to wildlife. To top it off, during early summer, long before the forest's main fruits and nuts mature, the young cones possess a soft core that can be eaten.

When I first arrived here a lady known for her liberality and strong sense of egalitarianism advised me to not call these trees Digger Pines. That was because the name Digger came from the "Digger Indians," which was a contemptuous name given by white settlers to the Maidu and other Native Americans who occupied this land first, and who spent a lot of time digging for roots. I find the lady's sentiment admirable but somehow I can't transfer the offense I feel for disrespecting the natives to the tree. The name Digger Pine is rooted in our literature and folklore and it's a good name. The scientific name is PINUS SABINIANA, named for Joseph Sabine, an English lawyer and naturalist born in 1770.