Identification of the Wood of the Soft Pines of Western North America

Abstract

A method is described for identifying the woods of the soft pines of western North America: namely, western white pine (Pinus monticola Doug!.), sugar pine (P. lambertiana Doug!.), limber pine (P. flexilis James) and white bark pine (P. albicaulis Engelrn.). Unique features of P. f1exilis and P. albicaulis are the presence of crystals in the resin canals and dimple marks on tangentially split surfaces, respectively. P. monticola and P. lambertiana cannot be separated absolutely and judgement must be exercised based on a number of macroscopic and microscopic observations. One of the most useful of these observations appears to be the nature of the cross-field pitting between ray parenchyma and longitudinal earlywood tracheids. If thorough examination of a radial section reveals on-Iy a few examples of 3 pits per cross-field in the first formed earlywood tracheids then the sampie is probably P. monticola. However, if a few instances of 4 or 5 pits per cross-field are observed, probably the sampie is P. lambertiana.Resin canal diameter measurements do not provide a viable method of distinguishing these two species.

Wood Anatomy of Pinus Longaeva (Bristlecone Pine) and the Sustained Length-on-Age Increase of its Tracheids

“…7). They are of the same type as those found to be highly diagnostic for P. flexilis and P. albicaulis by Kellogg et al (1982), who were, to our knowledge, the first to report them in Pinus. This second report of crystals in three other species of pine suggests that they may occur more commonly in the genus.…”

Conifer Woods of the Pliocene Age from Yunnan, China

“…Comparison between the fossil wood and extant species in the section Cembra ( Hudson 1960, Cheng et al 1963Kellogg et al 1982;Zhou and Jiang 1994) shows that the features of the specimens are consistent with P. armandii. These features include the fact that the horizontal walls of the ray parenchyma are thin with relatively numerous pits, the transition from early to late wood is gradual, and sparse and distinctive nodular thickenings are present on the end walls of the ray parenchyma (Cheng et al 1963;Zhou and Jiang 1994).…”

Late Holocene forest dynamics, volcanism, and climate change at Whitewing Mountain and San Joaquin Ridge, Mono County, Sierra Nevada, CA, USA

“…Samples represented all major deadwood locations, and included a range of sizes and forms present. Wood samples were prepared for analysis using minor modifications of conventional methods (Kellogg et al, 1982). Samples were identified to generic level using diagnostic keys (Kukachka, 1960) and by comparing unknowns with vouchered material at the Smithsonian Institution's collection, as well as wood from live trees of candidate species collected locally.…”

“…Identification to species level was critical to our assessment but difficult with the candidates involved. Thus, in addition to standard keys, we used a combination of specific diagnostic traits to resolve taxonomy, including presence/absence of resin pockets, dimples, crystals in the resin canals, and shape of the ray cross fields (Kellogg et al, 1982;Miller and Wiedenhoeft, 2003;Wiedenhoeft et al, 2003aWiedenhoeft et al, , 2003bIAWA, 2004). Resolution of a minimum of six species from Whitewing Mtn (see Results) informed our subsequent methods for dating deadwood and modeling paleoclimates.…”