Post 00394
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Commonly lodge-pole pine holds on to, or hoards, a percentage of the seeds it bears; that is to say, these seeds remain in the cone, and the cone remains on the tree. In some situations it begins to bear at eight years of age, and in most localities by the time it is twelve. Year after year the cones, with their fertile seeds safely enclosed, are borne and cling to the tree. Some of these cones remain unopened from three to nine years. A small percentage of them do not open and distribute their seeds until they have been on the tree from twelve to twenty years, and many of the cones cling to the tree through life.
Under favorable conditions the lodge-pole is a rapidly growing conifer. In a forty-five-year growth near my home, the varied light and soil conditions were so spotted that in a small area marked differences in growth were shown. A few clusters were vigorous, and the trees showed an average diameter of six inches and a height of thirty-four feet. From this the size dropped, and in one group the individuals were less than one inch in diameter and scarcely tall enough to be used as a cane; yet all were forty-five years old.
The lodge-pole is not long-lived. The oldest one I ever measured grew upon the slope of Long’s Peak. It was three hundred and forty-six years of age, measured twenty-nine inches in diameter, and stood eighty-four feet high. A study of its annual rings showed that at the age of two hundred it was only eleven inches in diameter, with a height of sixty-nine feet. Evidently it had lived two centuries in an overcrowded district. The soil and moisture conditions were good, and apparently in its two hundred and second year a forest fire brought it advantages by sweeping away its crowding, retarding competitors. Its annual ring two hundred and two bore a big fire-scar, and after this age it grew with a marked increase of rapidity over the rate of previous years. A mature lodge-pole of average size and age measures about eighteen inches in diameter and stands sixty feet high, with an age of between one hundred and twenty-five and one hundred and seventy-five years.