But whether old or young, sheltered or exposed to the wildest gales, this tree is ever found irrepressibly and extravagantly picturesque, and offers a richer and more varied series of forms to the artist than any other conifer I know of.
NUT PINE (_Pinus monophylla_) The Nut Pine covers or rather dots the eastern flank of the Sierra, to which it is mostly restricted, in grayish, bush-like patches, from the margin of the sage-plains to an elevation of from 7000 to 8000 feet.
A more contentedly fruitful and unaspiring conifer could not be conceived.

All the species we have been sketching make departures more or less distant from the typical spire form, but none goes so far as this.

Without any apparent exigency of climate or soil, it remains near the ground, throwing out crooked, divergent branches like an orchard apple-tree, and seldom pushes a single shoot higher than fifteen or twenty feet above the ground.
The average thickness of the trunk is, perhaps, about ten or twelve inches.

The leaves are mostly undivided, like round awls, instead of being separated, like those of other pines, into twos and threes and fives.

The cones are green while growing, and are usually found over all the tree, forming quite a marked feature as seen against the bluish-gray foliage.