The foliage is short and rigid, two leaves in a fascicle, arranged in comparatively long, cylindrical tassels at the ends of the tough, up-curving branchlets.

The cones are about two inches long, growing in stiff clusters among the needles, without making any striking effect, except while very young, when they are of a vivid crimson color, and the whole tree appears to be dotted with brilliant flowers.

The sterile cones are still more showy, on account of their great abundance, often giving a reddish-yellow tinge to the whole mass of the foliage, and filling the air with pollen.
No other pine on the range is so regularly planted as this one.

Moraine forests sweep along the sides of the high, rocky valleys for miles without interruption; still, strictly speaking, they are not dense, for flecks of sunshine and flowers find their way into the darkest places, where the trees grow tallest and thickest.

Tall, nutritious grasses are specially abundant beneath them, growing over all the ground, in sunshine and shade, over extensive areas like a farmer's crop, and serving as pasture for the multitude of sheep that are driven from the arid plains every summer as soon as the snow is melted.
The Two-leaved Pine, more than any other, is subject to destruction by fire.