Ponderosa!

The ponderosa pine is the classic ornament of Arizona's high country. In multiples of millions, it grows in intermittent stretches from the Kaibab Plateau in our far north across parts of the Coconino Plateau, south to Mingus Mountain and the Bradshaws, and east along the Mogollon Rim into New Mexico. That irregular, deep green expanse, more than 300 miles long, is the largest ponderosa pine forest in the world.

Farther south, the ponderosa reappears in the high-altitude woodlands that crown such "sky islands" in the Sonoran Desert as Mount Graham, Mount Lemmon, and the Huachuca, Chiricahua, and Galiuro ranges. To nonresidents, and even among Arizonans themselves, it often comes as

PONDEROSA!

a surprise to learn that forestland accounts for roughly a fourth of our state's total land area, or some 20 million acres. Of those, nearly four million acres support commercial-grade timber-enough wood (21 billion board feet) to build two million houses. Ponderosa pine represents 92 percent of that figure. All but about four percent of the ponderosas, incidentally, grow on public land.

Some more facts and figures about this important tree: In this state, the ponderosa grows to the respectable height of 100 feet or more, with a diameter up to 30 inches. A mature tree in our higher regions may well attain an age of 300 to 350 years.

In its youth, the ponderosa's bark is so dark that woodsmen long ago dubbed it the "blackjack." The outer bark has blackish ridges, although the inner bark already shows tinges of orange and yellow. But as the tree matures, the great, handsome outer plates take on shades of cinnamon, orange, and buff-yellow, and the coloring grows more pronounced as the years advance. For that reason, and because of the buff color of the wood itself, the pioneers often called ponderosa "Western yellow pine." A late 19th century geologist also acknowledged it as one of the most beautiful of trees, "large and noble in aspect." Another observer, a former naval officer named Edward Beale who explored the virginal northern Arizona forest in the 1850s, pronounced it "the most beautiful region I ever remember to have seen in any part of the world.... A vast forest of gigantic pines, intersected frequently with open glades, sprinkled all over with mountains, meadows, and wide savannahs, and covered with the richest grasses...."

Those early-day impressions of the ponderosa forest are echoed in our own times. Says researcher W. W. Covington of Northern Arizona University's School of Forestry at Flagstaff, "I think it is one of the most beautiful forests around. I really like those old yellow pines."

They have their own unmistakable fragrance, those old yellow pines-a clean, fresh odor that delights the nostrils as you stroll the forest paths. And they have their own distinctive sounds: the soft whisper of the breeze through the pine needles, ponderosa's unique and lovely windsong, and the chatter of squirrels and chirping of birds that make the conifer forest their home. "Of all pines," mused naturalist John Muir, "this one gives forth the finest music to the winds. That characteristic chattering and chirping, by the way, represents an important aspect of life in the ponderosa forest. No less than 1,025 species of wildlife are interrelated with-and, in some cases, dependent upon the pon-derosa. (That number includes plants as (PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 12 AND 13) Rolling ridgelines wear a seamless mantle of ponderosa pines in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest of eastern Arizona.

(INSET, PAGE 13) A new pine cone. (RIGHT) The mature ponderosas of the Kaibab Plateau, north of the Grand Canyon, provide the habitat of the rare Kaibab squirrel (BELOW).

well as mammals-but not insects.) The most celebrated of these species, almost surely, are the Abert squirrel and its cousin, the Kaibab squirrel. (See Arizona Highways, July, 1987.) The Abert (named for James W. Abert, a military cartographer of the 1800s) lives on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon; the Kaibab, on the North Rim. Separated eons ago by the forming of that titanic gorge, the two developed independently of each other, each with slightly different charac-teristics. The Abert has a white belly; the Kaibab's is black, and its tail is whiter. Indeed, that white tail is its most distinc-tive feature. Together they're called tassel-eared squirrels because of their tufted ears.

Both live off the ponderosa. The tree supplies materials and platforms for their nests. They eat the inner bark and a subterranean growth known as hypogeous fungi. (Foresters call these "truffles," not to be confused with the cultivated truffles served in French restaurants.) A wildlife ecologist at NAU's forestry school, David R. Patton, once tamed and leash-trained an Abert squirrel to help him carry out research on truffles. "They're hard to find by digging, without a squirrel to show you where," says Patton. "What I was trying to do was train the squirrel to lead me to their locations, so I could count the number of truffles under all those trees." Deer and elk are indigenous to the ponderosa forest, too. They love the moss that clings to the trunks of the trees, and the mistletoe that grows among the branches. I watched with Travis Huntley, resource manager for Southwest Forest Industries, as his loggers harvested pines on the slopes of the White Mountains, and we talked about how the cutting affects the wildlife. "Those elk and deer are on