This picture was taken in a roadside meadow just east of Black Butte Ranch in Central Oregon, a few miles northwest of the western theme town of Sisters on Highway 20.
The three tree trunks in the foreground are ponderosa pine(Pinus ponderosa). Old growth ponderosa pine forests were once common in dry regions of the west, but they are a commercially valuable species, so they have been heavily logged. Mature ponderosa pines are easily identified by the dramatically colored bark which turns from black to yellow brown after about 150 years (according to one authority).
The grove of trees in the background are quaking aspens, Populus tremuloides. Aspens reproduce primarily by cloning themselves through sprouts from roots, so the aspens in this picture are probably all part of the same organism. In fact, an 100 acre aspen grove in Utah is this planets' largest organism. Because they continually reproduce new stems, scientists think some aspen groves have survived since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. Aspens are the most widely distributed tree in North America.
