Keyed Out #135 — Pinus monticola

Question 1

Its woody seed cones are built from scales set in a rising spiral, and each scale carries a pair of seeds tucked against its upper face.

Accepted Answer

pine family

Question 2

Snap a shoot or cut into the trunk and clear, sharply aromatic {resin} wells up from ducts that run through the wood and through the leaves alike.

Accepted Answer

Pinaceae

Question 3

Its needles never stand singly on the twig: they are gathered into small bundles, each bundle gripped at the base by a papery {sheath} and seated on a stubby dwarf shoot.

Accepted Answer

Pinus

Question 4

Its ripe woody cones drop from the branch whole and intact, scales still fixed to the axis, instead of crumbling apart in place and leaving a bare spike standing on the twig.

Accepted Answer

Pinus

Question 5

It grows as a tall single straight-stemmed forest tree that sheds its lower limbs to a long clean bole in closed, moist mountain forest, not as a squat wind-shaped tree of dry open ridges near timberline.

Accepted Answer

Pinus monticola

Question 6

Grey bark on an old trunk is divided into a checkerboard of small square to rectangular scaly plates rather than into long rounded ridges separated by deep furrows.

Accepted Answer

Pinus monticola