How to Identify Pine & Fir Trees in Tahoe

You cannot travel though the Lake Tahoe, California, area without passing forests of evergreens--the trees John Muir admired more than a century ago when he wrote, "The coniferous forests of the Sierra are the grandest and most beautiful in the world." The diversity of conifers found in the Tahoe area results from the differences in elevation in near the lake--from 6,200 to more than 10,000 feet. This creates differences in both exposure and moisture.

Look at the leaves to distinguish between the Pinaceae family, which includes pines, fir and hemlock, and the Cupressaceae, or cypress, family. Needle-shaped leaves point to Pinaceae; scalelike leaves indicate cypress.

Distinguish among members of the Pinaceae family by determining how the needles attach to the branch. You are looking at a pine if the needles attached in packets of up to five needles held together at the base by paperlike bark. Flat needles growing individually from the branch indicate fir or hemlock.

Count the number of needles per bundle. Sugar pine, western white and whitebark pine have five needles. Lodgepole pine has two very short needles, while Jeffrey and Ponderosa have three needles per bundle.

Distinguish among sugar, western white and whitebark pine by their cones; sugar pine have foot-long pendulous cones, western white have cones growing erect at the tip of their branches, while whitebark cones are very small and purple when immature. In addition, whitebark pines grow only in very high elevations.

Distinguish between the Ponderosa and the Jeffrey pine by inspecting the cones. Ponderosa cones are egg-shaped, 3 to 5 inches long, with a prickle on each scale that sticks out; Jeffrey cones are much larger, 5 to 12 inches, with prickles that curve inward.

Distinguish fir from hemlock by looking closely at how the flattened needles attach to the branch. A plump base indicates a fir; a narrow base joined to the branch by little wooden pegs indicates a hemlock.

Identify the white fir--one of the three most common conifers in Tahoe--by its trunk. The silvery-gray bark is smooth with blisters that, when "popped," will shoot out resin. Confirm the identification by crushing the needles. White fir needles will release a citrus smell.

Identify red fir by its distinctive reddish-brown or reddish-purple bark. Confirm by looking at the color of the needles. The red fir has bold green-blue needles, while the white fir's needles are pale green.