Pinus sabiniana gray pine, foothill pine

Pinus sabiniana, southeast Frost Amphitheater, viewed from outside Frost. Note its major ascending branches, lit by the sun, through the foreground trees. Possibly the only remaining gray pine on central campus. Sairus Patel, 4 Mar 2018

Pinus sabiniana cones (6″ long) with recurved prickles, leaves (10″ long) from greenbelt near Junipero Serra Boulevard. Sairus Patel, 5 Mar 2018

A pine of haunting allure, with its leaning trunk and often wispy crown of long gray-green foliage, this three-needled species grows in the Sierra Nevada foothills and the Coast Ranges, closest to campus in the Santa Cruz Mountains around Loma Prieta. The dark-barked trunk divides low into multiple upright stems that support the magnificent cones that develop near the top – easily observed, and often found littered below, their stout curved prickles and dramatic crusts of sticky pitch making them a choice collectible, if not easy to handle.

Until about the 2000s, the tree was widely known as “digger” pine, after a term for native peoples who valued its seeds and were observed digging for subsistence by Gold Rush prospectors (themselves digging for gold) – a name now considered pejorative and no longer in common use. A multiplicity of other names are available, including ghost pine (a reference to the airy crown), foothill pine, and bull pine.

Gray pine has not been planted on campus since at least the 1960s. Old specimens in the Arboretum were noted in front of the museum in 1927 (George B. Culver, Stanford Illustrated Review, April). One of the last survivors from that era, 70 yards east of the corner of Museum Way and Lomita Drive, was removed in 2007. Another towers over the coast live oaks at the southeast corner of Museum Way and Palm Drive, just south of the parking lot. Compare it to the Torrey pine in front of Bing Concert Hall, near the foundation stones of the old men’s gymnasium; see P. torreyana for points of comparison. Two other gray pines are nearby: one just north of Roth way, midway between Lomita Drive and Palm Drive; another north of it near the museum parking lot.

A vigorous specimen with strong ascending branches grows atop the berm in the southeast part of Frost Amphitheater. Much of its crown is easily visible if you stand just east of Littlefield Center. A specimen south of Crothers Memorial Hall was removed in 2009 when the site was paved for a patio.

Two remain from a once-significant group in the Junipero Serra Boulevard greenbelt behind 936 Lathrop Place; reach them via the path beside 950. They likely gave rise to about three substantial, heavily coning progeny across the boulevard in the Dish area.

Further intrigue lies in that direction: groups of gray pine lean over Page Mill Road on either side as it crests the hill just south of Deer Creek Road, before swooping down to I-280. A greener-needled pine, perhaps P. halepensis, is mixed in. A similarly composed group on Page Mill can be seen just north of Deer Creek Road. This section of Page Mill Road, constructed in the late 1960s during the planning of I-280 in this area, bypasses and preserves the rustic Old Page Mill Road and its historic Frenchman’s Tower. These pines were likely planted at that time – as were others on the embankments of I-280 south of there, especially around exit signs, such as the sentinel at the Page Mill offramp exit sign on northbound I-280. Also see the Arizona cypress entry for more I-280 tree highlights.

Pinus sabiniana cone, leaves, seeds. From: George B. Sudworth, Forest Trees of the Pacific Slope

Comparison of seeds and seed wings of Pinus coulteri and Pinus sabiniana. John Rawlings, c 2005

· A simple key to campus pines

Name derivation: Pinus – Latin for pine; sabiniana – Joseph Sabine (1770–1837), English horticulturalist, founder of Transactions of the Royal Horticultural Society.