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US National Parks Inyo National Forest, California Patriarch Grove

This is part three of our Inyo National Forest Site. Click the left turn sign to get back to the start page or the U-turn sign to get back to the national parks page.

Patriarch Grove is at an elevation near the tree line. The grove is named after the world's largest Bristlecone Pine, the Patriarch Tree.

A plaque near "The Patriarch" honors its discoverer: Al Norden retired in 1954 as White Mountain district Ranger after 35 years with the U.S. Forest Service. He discovered the "Patriarch" in 1948 and in 1951 it was added to the American Forestry Association's List of Big Trees as the largest Bristlecone Pine. It was the efforts of this man that eventually brought Edmund Schulman to this area and led to the establishment of a White Mountain Natural Area and the Bristlecone Pine Forest.

The landscape is dotted with Bristlecone and Limber Pines. Its remoteness and its moonscape appearance gives the Patriarch Grove an almost surreal atmosphere.

The "Patriarch" is still a relatively young tree, just about 1,300 years old. Young Bristlecone Pines often have long straight trunks and short limbs densely clad with needle-covered branches. The foliage consists of short, dark, curved needles, five to the bundle. But as the tree ages throughout the millennia, it begins to show the slow process of death. Some of its roots perish as erosion of the soil gradually uncovers them. The portions of branches and trunk connected to that particular, now dead, root also die. As dead strips of trunk dry out, their bark sloughs off, revealing bare wood. Over time, a trunk may be traversed by as little as one thin strip of living bark. Even after death, a Bristlecone continues to dominate its surroundings. Magnificent old snags stand like weathered sentinels, only toppling when the bases of their roots have completely eroded away.

And sometimes, a new, young seedling begins to grow right in front of an old veteran, starting over the circle of life.

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