Pinus ponderosa

Ponderosa pine or western yellow-pine, a 3-needle pine, is in the pine or Pinaceae family and is native to western Canada and the United States, from the southern interior of British Columbia through 16 western states from California to Colorado. It generally favors lower rainfall, hotter climates than lodgepole pine (P. contorta).

It has 5 recognized subspecies (note map below).

• Needles are in fascicles of 3, up to 20 cm long, flexible, slightly twisted and bunched at twig tips. Branches are in annual whorls.
• Species is monoecious; male pollen cones are yellow-red, cylindrical, in clusters near ends of branches; young females are reddish at branch tips.
• Mature seed cones are 7–10 cm long, 6–8 cm wide when open, 1, 2 or 3 cones clumped together, colour mostly reddish brown, sessile to nearly sessile, scales in steep spirals and armed with a slender prickle. They mature in 2 years, opening soon after to shed seeds, falling off and leaving rosettes of scales on branchlets.
• Bark is yellow to red-brown, deeply, irregularly furrowed, forming broadly rectangular, scaly plates.