Scientific Name
Pinus aristata
The Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine is one of the longest-lived trees, capable of reaching 2,000 years of age. Rocky Mountain bristlecone is a native resident of high elevations in the Colorado and northern New Mexico Rockies — where the harsh environment features extreme cold, thin soils, a short growing season and punishing winds. In most respects, it is like the Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) that also lives in very challenging conditions except the Great Basin is known to live more than twice as long. The regional bristlecone pine has short needles that are approximately a half-inch long in bundles of five. A unique feature of the needles distinguishing it from the Great Basin version is that the needles are marked with white dots of sticky sweet-smelling resin. As the tree is long-lived, so are its needles, which remain in place for about 15 years and give the branches a thick bushy-tailed appearance. The 2- to 4- inch-long cones have prickles on each scale, giving the tree its common name. Though this pine is smaller in stature than many others and is very slow growing even in optimum conditions. After many years it can attain a height as tall as 63 feet like the current U.S. champion that lives in southern Colorado. Bringing a tree that is native to areas with extremely harsh growing conditions into urban cultivation that offers a comparatively elegant life hasn’t seemed to affect it. It hasn’t changed its slow growth ways, nor has it experienced any apparent disease or pest issues. However, its record of living in city conditions so far, perhaps at most 100 years, is such a small fraction of its potential life span that its performance in the long run is not certain. Beyond that, who would dare speculate about the fate of an organism rooted in place being able to withstand a dynamic city’s land use changes that might take place in the next 1,000-plus years?