Indeed, Viewed Comprehensively, The Entire
State Seems To Be Pretty Evenly Divided Into Mountain Ranges Covered
With Nut Pines And
Plains covered with sage - now a swath of pines
stretching from north to south, now a swath of sage; the
One black,
the other gray; one severely level, the other sweeping on complacently
over ridge and valley and lofty crowning dome.
The real character of a forest of this sort would never be guessed by
the inexperienced observer. Traveling across the sage levels in the
dazzling sunlight, you gaze with shaded eyes at the mountains rising
along their edges, perhaps twenty miles away, but no invitation that
is at all likely to be understood is discernible. Every mountain,
however high it swells into the sky, seem utterly barren. Approaching
nearer, a low brushy growth is seen, strangely black in aspect, as
though it had been burned. This is a nut pine forest, the bountiful
orchard of the red man. When you ascend into its midst you find the
ground beneath the trees, and in the openings also, nearly naked, and
mostly rough on the surface - a succession of crumbling ledges of lava,
limestones, slate, and quartzite, coarsely strewn with soil weathered
from the. Here and there occurs a bunch of sage or linosyris, or a
purple aster, or a tuft of dry bunch-grass.
The harshest mountainsides, hot and waterless, seem best adapted to
the nut pine's development. No slope is too steep, none too dry;
every situation seems to be gratefully chosen, if only it be
sufficiently rocky and firm to afford secure anchorage for the tough,
grasping roots. It is a sturdy, thickset little tree, usually about
fifteen feet high when full grown, and about as broad as high, holding
its knotty branches well out in every direction in stiff zigzags, but
turning them gracefully upward at the ends in rounded bosses. Though
making so dark a mass in the distance, the foliage is a pale grayish
green, in stiff, awl-shaped fascicles. When examined closely these
round needles seem inclined to be two-leaved, but they are mostly held
firmly together, as if to guard against evaporation. The bark on the
older sections is nearly black, so that the boles and branches are
clearly traced against the prevailing gray of the mountains on which
they delight to dwell.
The value of this species to Nevada is not easily overestimated. It
furnishes fuel, charcoal, and timber for the mines, and, together with
the enduring juniper, so generally associated with it, supplies the
ranches with abundance of firewood and rough fencing. Many a square
mile has already been denuded in supplying these demands, but, so
great is the area covered by it, no appreciable loss has as yet been
sustained. It is pretty generally known that this tree yields edible
nuts, but their importance and excellence as human food is infinitely
greater than is supposed. In fruitful seasons like this one, the pine
nut crop of Nevada is, perhaps, greater than the entire wheat crop of
California, concerning which so much is said and felt throughout the
food markets of the world.
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