The average size of the tree is about thirty or forty feet in height and twelve to fourteen inches in diameter.

The cones are about four inches long and covered with a sort of varnish and gum, rendering them impervious to moisture.
No observer can fail to notice the admirable adaptation of this curious pine to the fire-swept regions where alone it is found.

After a running fire has scorched and killed it the cones open and the ground beneath it is then sown broadcast with all the seeds ripened during its whole life.
Then up spring a crowd of bright, hopeful seedlings, giving beauty for ashes in lavish abundance.
The Sugar Pine, King Of Pine Trees Of all the world's eighty or ninety species of pine trees, the Sugar Pine (Pinus Lambertiana) is king, surpassing all others, not merely in size but in lordly beauty and majesty.

In the Yosemite region it grows at an elevation of from 3000 to 7000 feet above the sea and attains most perfect development at a height of about 5000 feet.

The largest specimens are commonly about 220 feet high and from six to eight feet in diameter four feet from the ground, though some grand old patriarch may be met here and there that has enjoyed six or eight centuries of storms and attained a thickness of ten or even twelve feet, still sweet and fresh in every fiber.