White Pine.  This is found on northern slopes as low down as 6500 feet, though it generally ranges above 7000 feet, and is quite common.  It sometimes is called the silver pine, and generally in the Tahoe region, the mountain pine.  It grows to a height of from fifty to one hundred and seventy-five feet, the branches slender and spreading or somewhat drooping, and mostly confined to the upper portion of the shaft.  The trunk is from one to six feet in diameter and clothed with a very smooth though slightly checked whitish or reddish bark.  The needles are five (rarely four) in a place, very slender, one to three and three-fourths inches long, sheathed at the base by thinnish narrow deciduous scales, some of which are one inch long.  The cones come in clusters of one to seven, from six to eight or rarely ten inches long, very slender when closed and usually curved towards the tip, black-purple or green when young, buff-brown when ripe.  It is best recognized by its light-gray smooth bark, broken into squarish plates, its pale-blue-green foliage composed of short needles, and its pendulous cones so slender as to give rise to the name “Finger-Cone Pine.”

Sugar Pine.  This is found on the lower terraces of Tahoe, fringing the region with a sparse and scattering growth, but it is not found on the higher slopes of the Sierra.  On the western side its range is nearly identical with that of the red fir.  It grows from eighty to one hundred and fifty feet high, the young and adult trees symmetrical, but the aged trees commonly with broken summits or characteristically flat-topped with one or two long arm-like branches exceeding shorter ones.  The trunk is from two to eight feet in diameter, and the bark brown or reddish, closely fissured into rough ridges.  The needles are slender, five in a bundle, two to three and a half inches long.  The cones are pendulous, borne on stalks at the end of the branches, mostly in the very summit of the tree, very long-oblong, thirteen to eighteen inches long, four to six inches in diameter when opened.

This pine gains its name from its sugary exudation, sought by the native tribes, which forms hard white crystallized nodules on the upper side of fire or ax wounds in the wood.  This flow contains resin, is manna-like, has cathartic properties, and is as sweet as cane-sugar.  The seeds are edible.  Although very small they are more valued by the native tribes than the large seeds of the Digger Pine on account of their better flavor.  In former days, when it came October, the Indians went to the high mountains about their valleys to gather the cones.  They camped on the ridges where the sugar pines grow and celebrated their sylvan journey by tree-climbing contests among the men.  In these latter days, being possessed of the white man’s ax, they find it more convenient to cut the tree down.  It is undoubtedly the most remarkable of all pines, viewed either from the standpoint of its economic value or sylvan interest.  It is the largest of pine trees, considered whether as to weight or girth, and more than any other tree gives beauty and distinction to the Sierran forest.—­Jepson.

The long cones found in abundance about Tahoe Tavern are those of the sugar pine.