The yellow pine is found growing with them on warm hillsides, and the silver fir on cool northern slopes but, noble as these are, the sugar pine is easily king, and spreads his arms above them in blessing while they rock and wave in sign of recognition.

The main branches are sometimes forty feet long, yet persistently simple, seldom dividing at all, excepting near the end; but anything like a bare cable appearance is prevented by the small, tasseled branchlets that extend all around them; and when these superb limbs sweep out symmetrically on all sides, a crown sixty or seventy feet wide is formed, which, gracefully poised on the summit of the noble shaft, is a glorious object.

Commonly, however, there is a preponderance of limbs toward the east, away from the direction of the prevailing winds.
Although so unconventional when full-grown, the sugar pine is a remarkably proper tree in youth--a strict follower of coniferous fashions--slim, erect, with leafy branches kept exactly in place, each tapering in outline and terminating in a spiry point.

The successive forms between the cautious neatness of youth and the bold freedom of maturity offer a delightful study.

At the age of fifty or sixty years, the shy, fashionable form begins to be broken up.