Plant Description
Mature trees over 100 feet tall, trunks reaching 5 feet in diameter; deeply furrowed brown to grayish-brown bark. Branches of the tree droop downward within a narrow to broadly conic canopy, that is often flattened in age.
Single round trunk, narrow to cone-shaped crown that flattens with age; bark, long scaly fissures; needles single, spirally arranged; distinguished by flattened, short-stalked round-tipped needles and pendulous papery cones with 3 papery bracts.
Habitat
Found on mountain slopes, generally above 6500 feet, as low as 5000 feet in canyons.
Leaves
Needles protrude in all directions from the branches and are narrow, flat, soft, rounded at tip, 3/4 to 1-1/4 inches long and attached to branches with short twisted stems.
Flowers
Gymnosperm, not a flowering plant.
Fruit
Reddish-brown female cones are 3 inches long, pendulous with distinctive 3-pronged papery bracts extending from rounded scales, mature first season and shed in fall. Male cones are orangish-red, produced in the axils of leaves of the preceding year.