Coniferous Trees of the West, part one.

One thing anyone will notice about the west is that it is not covered with trees everywhere like much of the more natural portions of Eastern North America are.  The lower elevations, except on the Pacific coast, are usually either desert, semi-arid scrub, or extensive grasslands.  When trees are encountered, they are usually along rivers, in towns or near homes, or on cliffs and small rises in elevation where the sky is compelled to give up just a little bit more moisture than usual, and retains it differently when it does land.  Such trees also usually tend to be relatively short, and for the most part, evergreen conifers far out-populate broadleafed deciduous specimens.

See?  Short and stubby, maybe not even around 40 feet tall along that river.  In the background is scenery that would have been typical of the area, and has been maintained as open, natural range.  The bottomlands along the creek contain ash trees and cottonwoods for the most part, a pattern common  throughout the great plains near creeks and other riparian bodies.  This was taken off of I-335, about 10 miles north of the Emporia, Kansas exit.

In the last post I mentioned the various trees one sees following US 89 in the Arizona Strip.  Most of those happened to be "christmas trees", or cone-bearing evergreens.  There are many reasons for this, but the most important would be that they tend to recover from or resist fire well and handle western moisture conditions a bit differently than broad-leaved trees do.  Usually you will not see many of them on the plains, except on slopes, bluffs, or other such areas.  This has to do with water, sure, but also fire.  (To be covered whenever I get around to doing a long series of posts on the plains and why they should not be ignored as "fly-over/corn states").  Moving closer towards the Rocky mountains, from 4,500 feet and up, conifers will start rivaling Cottonwoods as the trees that pop up in the midst of all that wonderful grass (and, to be fair, yes, cacti and yuccas and other fun stuff).  Easy places to see this yourself?

• The western reaches of the Platte River valley past Kearney, Nebraska along I-80.  Looking out past the river and cultivated areas, one sees the valley limits.  Usually there are big stretches of open prairie, but in some spots you can see some junipers and pines.
• I-80 right at the Nebraska/Wyoming border in a lovely town called Pine Bluff.  There is also a huge statue of the Virgin Mary there, which is a shrine.  Note: Cheap gas opportunity at the Sinclair station right off that exit. 
• I-25 heading north from Santa Fe to Denver.  Not in the mountains, but a nice view of them from the plains.  Little hills are topped with conifers and surrounded with rolling shortgrass expanses as far as the eye can see!

These two examples are both from Fort Union National Monument, which sits in open shortgrass prairie between isolated hills at just over 6,000 feet above sea level.  The place is an easy short side trip off of I-25 in New Mexico.  Like most NPS sites, it does its best to try and revert the scenery to natural defaults, so this is a pretty good place to get a feel for "High Plains meets Mountains and makes trees".  The shots above look west and east respectively.  The wind... lets just say its pretty unique.  More on the Fort later, I promise.

Anyway, once you get into the mountains and then past them into more mountains, deserts, strange rock formations, etc., you are going to find a bunch of coniferous evergreens.  On the "bottom" of the inter-mountain west, meaning around 4,500 to 6,000 feet or so, most of these are going to be junipers and pinyon pines.  I would link those, but they have quite a few species to their names, so feel free to use wikipedia or Plantmaps (an amazing, amazing site) to find some.  

What you see in the centre foreground is a Utah Juniper (I gave you a link after all!) with some Colorado Pinyons (did not get close enough to identify for sure, pinyons can still confuse me) to the right and top left.  As you can see, the juniper (we have common junipers back east) is more cedar-tree looking, whereas the pinyon has those nice globes of needles common to most pines.  Yep, its rocky and dry there, at a turnout just inside the western entrance of Capitol Reef National Park on Utah 24.

Basically, when you climb out of the drier areas of the west, the first things you will see that look tree like and do not require rivers as a moisture source are these two species.  At first they start out spread out and look more like large shrubs and ornamental trees.  

But then they start to clump together a bit more and form a dwarf forest.

Then they even start getting to look a little more like trees, as foot by foot, the general area gets just that much more moisture.  Heck, as you can see, even the sagebrush in front is a bit bigger.

Eventually it even passes for something that looks like a disturbed woodland in the east.  What comes next?  Tall pinyons, junipers, and the braver specimens of the Ponderosa Pine.

Now for some scale.  How far did you think that road went to go through such transitions?  It took about five miles, maybe less, on what for western standards passes as fairly flat terrain.  The road is Utah 12, a designated national scenic byway and one of the most amazing stretches of road to illustrate changing habitats and the transition from near desert to groves of aspen and blue spruce.  If you ever have a chance to drive it, by all means, do so.  On the route are no less than three national parks (Ok, Grand Staircase-Escalante is still a monument), four major climactic zones and USDA gardening zones 3-7 in the space of the 120 or so miles between Torrey (which has a comfortable Best Western) and Escalante, Utah.  Now don't get me wrong, you can see transitional spaces throughout the west, but there are few places where they happen uninterrupted by sudden elevation changes or development.  In fact, the only other place I have experienced a smooth transition between habitats and forest types would be the Brent road in Northern Ontario.  In the future, expect a post on both drives in more detail.  Utah 12 is pretty exciting!  US 89 in Arizona also does a fairly good job at seeing such a forest transition, as does heading south on US 191 from I-40.  Granted, these forests are ubiquitous in the inter-montane west.  

What does this pinyon and juniper place feel like?  Pretty calm, and pretty unique.  Not quite desert, not quite plains, not quite true forest.  It has a nice slightly woody smell to it, which I am sure is even more amazing after a rain.  There are small cacti growing on the ground here and there, mostly prickly pears and some chollas, especially in New Mexico.  Sagebrush is everywhere (you know, like the lavender in your garden) and believe me when I say it is probably the softest plant out there.  There are flowers, grasses, rocks, old logs, and a strange cross between dirt, clay, and sand.  I suppose the land has a feel like one would expect of areas with mission architecture and and furnishings, and it fits that bill in the northern half of New Mexico. 

Oh, and ever wonder where most commercial pine nuts come from?  Pinyon pines.  Sadly, plantations of them over in China, and not from trees in their native range and home soils.   

So this is the end of part one of this series.  In part two, we venture higher into the taller pines.