Ponderosa Pine (Ep. 9) - Botany with Brit

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Today we visit Sula, Montana to see the old bark-peeled grove of Ponderosa Pine trees at Indian Tree Campground. These thriving ponderosas still bear the scars from Bitterroot Salish women harvesting their bark for food 200 years ago.

This tree had many other uses: the pitch was used as a glue and waterproofing agent and was chewed as gum, the trunks were made into dugout canoes, the needles were used in basketry and boiled to make a solution for cough or fever, and the trunks and limbs were used as firewood and building material.

Ponderosa pines have purple pinecones when they are fresh on the tree. A mammoth, hulking chipmunk enlightened me to this fact on a hike in Montana as he postured aggressively in front of his purple pinecone booty. I have never seen a bigger chipmunk, or a more bright purple pine cone. Once the cones fall off the tree and dry out they turn brown, spherical, and can be distinguished by a prickle on each scale. The bark of ponderosa pines is a distinctive orange color divided into plates by darker brown fissures, and bits of the bark flake off in puzzle-piece shapes that you can find littering the base of the tree. On a warm day you might also be able to identify the tree by scent - it smells like vanilla!

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