A History of the Pines

OK, now that we’ve got the entire team involved, this is turning into a long story . . . and a lot of research. From what I can tell, Meriwether Lewis was the first white person to observe the lodgepole pine. This was, perhaps, in Wyoming, where the tree grows straight and slender. But, I am speculating to some extent here because Lewis never used the word "lodgepole." In fact, in all his journals, he named only three "pines"—white, balsam, spruce—and I'm not sure which species these really are. The spruce pine, for example, grows only in Georgia or Florida, so Meriwether Lewis didn't see one of those on his exploration. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he saw lodgepole, ponderosa, pinyon, whitebark, and western white pine. He may even have seen the shore pine when he reached the Pacific: "[The] species grows in low grounds, and in places frequently overflown by the tide, seldom rising higher than thirty-five feet, and not more than from two and a half to four in diameter . . . ."

After the Lewis and Clark expedition, the next note we have is from about 20 years later when David Douglas began his work for the Royal Horticultural Society of London. He started collecting in 1823 at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River. (David Douglas was one of the greatest explorer/botanists in North American history. He collected more than 500 species of trees and plants in the early 19th century, including the Douglas fir, which is named for him. He died young in Hawaii—killed by a bull in a bull trap.) As Kass mentioned in his comment about the Oregon coast, the first thing Douglas found was the shore pine. He gave it the scientific name Pinus contorta. Here is his description of the leaves: “Leaves in pairs, rounded on the back, concave on the inner side, rigid, acute, 2 to 2 ½ inches long, having a very short ragged or ciliated sheath.” For the branches, this is his description: “Branches drooping, greatly twisted in every direction, remarkably tough, the younger ones covered by acuminate chaffy brown scales.”

There you have it. I think that is the answer. The first written botanical record of the lodgepole pine calls it “contorta” because its branches are twisted, not its needles. That is not quite the end of the story though. It is not clear to me that either Meriwether Lewis or David Douglas recognized that the twisted shore pine and the skinny lodgepole pine were the same species. It wasn’t until 1871 that another giant of botany, George Engelmann, showed that the Rocky Mountain lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var latifolia) was a variety of the shore pine (Pinus contorta var contorta).