Category Archive

Playing with SketchbookX. One leaf, four lives.

We have moved along to the spruces. Their needles grow as singletons, instead of in bunches of 2-5 the way the needles on most pines grow, and each needle emerges from a small, long-lasting bump on the twig. See how much I’m learning already? I could not have said what distinguishes spruce from pine until this evening.

Sitka, Picea sitchensis, are the tallest spruce of the approximately 35 species in the genus, and one of the tallest trees overall. In old spruces, the branch nearest to the ground might be 40 meters up. Their native range is mostly north of California (Sitka, as in Alaska, is an accurate common name). And their needles are fun to draw. I felt like I imagine one does when making an architectural drawing.

The needles of this tree are only 2-4 cm long. Like its close relative Pinus balfouriana, from yesterday, they grow in a “foxtail” of closely bunched needles.

“The oldest known dated living trees are Bristlecone Pines more than 4600 years old . . . . Although these trees are classed among the oldest known living things, some shrubs and trees that spread in colonies or clumps from the same root system may be older.”

Going for something a bit more impressionistic. Didn’t capture the feel of rippling waves that the original gave me, but I try, try again.

Also known as the two-needle pinyon. “The most common species on the south rim of the Grand Canyon.”

I plan to get back to the needles once I have my field guide again, but I’m tempted to just draw one of these every day until I have done them justice.

I am visiting family without my field guide, so I picked this up in their yard.

I like the sense of scale the hand provides. These are such short needles, only 1-2″ long as a rule. This tree, which as far as I know I have never seen, is just barely native to the land that is now the state of California. Its range is mostly in Baja California, Mexico, and just peeks up over the border into the southernmost part of the state, not by the coast but inland.

I stopped when I got tired, which means that some of these needles cast no shadows or don’t connect up to the twig. Spooky.