Geology and the Ancient Bristlecone Pine		Bristlecone pines near the summit of White Mountain. A small part of the apparently dead tree in the foreground continues to grow. In constructing the road into the bristlecone pine area, a few trees and dead stumps had to be removed. Heavy equipment operators had great difficulty in pulling the deeply rooted stumps of even small bristlecones. 1974
by Yvor H. Smitter, Geologist California Division of Mines and Geology
A tough and remarkable little tree, the bristlecone pine (Pinus aristata), is now recognized as the world's oldest living thing. A number of these pines are more than 4,000 years old and many are centuries older than the largest of the giant sequoias or the stately coastal redwoods of California. Stands of bristlecone pines are found in	Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado, but the oldest trees live on While Mountain, about 30 miles east of Bishop, California. The bristlecone pine is a small tree, usually less than 30 feet high. Trunks and branches of the pines have often been twisted, gnarled, and	sculptured by windblown sand and ice. On some White Mountain slopes, centuries of wind and ice have "wind-pruned" trees SO that growth is virtually parallel to the ground and only a few feet high. In almost every sense, the implacable bristlecone pine seems to be uniquely adapted to an environment that is harsh and uncommonly difficult--most of these
280	California Geology - December 1974

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