Whitebark Pines!!!!

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About Whitebark Pines!!!!

This group is meant to engender appreciation for a completely (on flickr anyway) underappreciated tree species. Pinus albicaulis, the whitebark pine. A prominent dweller of alpine environs, whitebarks often grow from cracks in mountain granite into great gnarled multifurcating beauties. One of the outstandingly cool features of the biology of these trees is their relationship a relative of jays and crows, Clark's Nutcracker. The pines produce prodigious numbers of seeds, and each Clark's Nutcracker furiously collects up to 100,000 them a year, caching them as a food source for the winter and spring. The birds never recover many of the seeds, and therefore inadvertently disperse them to favorable sites for germination and growth, thus increasing both the population of these beautiful trees, and their own favorite food.

Unfortunately, like many other excellent north american trees, whitebarks are suffering severely from outbreaks of both native and introduced pathogens. In the case of the whitebarks, both mountain pine beetles (a native beetle, flourishing excessively as a result of unusually warm winters) and white pine blister rust, a fungus introduced from asia, are decimating populations in many places in the western US.

So anyway, put your photos of these old gnarled mountain-men (or their old gnarled remains) in the group and admire them!