Willamette Valley Ponderosa Pine

Willamette Valley Ponderosa Pine
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Pinophyta
Class: Pinopsida
Order: Pinales
Family: Pinaceae
Genus: Pinus
Subgenus: Pinus
Species: P. ponderosa
Subspecies: P. p. var. willamettensis
Trinomial name
Pinus ponderosa var. willamettensis

The Willamette Valley Ponderosa Pine is a variant of the Ponderosa Pine native to the Willamette Valley in the Northwestern United States. It is adapted for Western Oregon's wet winter and dry summer.

History

The Willamette Valley ponderosa variant only grows on the valley floor, unlike the Douglas fir, which grows on hillsides, and the wood is softer and easier to mill than the native hardwoods.[1] Because of this, when early settlers used wood from the trees to build homes and cleared land for agriculture, the variant's population was "decimated".[1] Prior to restoration efforts, the pine survived only in scattered stands between Hillsboro and Cottage Grove.[1] The Lewis's woodpecker and the slender-billed nuthatch (a subspecies of the white-breasted nuthatch) nest in the tree and rely on it for food–their populations were reduced along with that of the pine.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Ryan, Catherine (March 28, 2012). "Loggers Give Unique Oregon Ponderosa Pine a Lifeline". High Country News. Retrieved March 12, 2015.

External links


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Saturday, February 20, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.