Talk:Pinus jeffreyi

Legend of dangerous cones?
An item which might be worth including on the page for the Jeffrey Pine, but I have only heard this (folk legend), so it needs to be verified before inclusion. The pinecone of the mature Jeffrey Pine is so large and heavy that it has knocked out (or even killed) people when they are hit by the pinecone falling from the tall tree. SaturnCat (talk) 23:24, 11 June 2009 (UTC)


 * In that the largest cones are less than ten inches long, I suspect a different pine (perhaps Coulter pine) is meant.--Curtis Clark (talk) 03:24, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

May also be digger pine. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.5.74.146 (talk) 14:44, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Image added
I edited the page to add an image of a stand of Jeffrey Pine growing east of the Sierra Nevada. The image shows different age classes of Jeffrey Pine, and it provides a better view of a mature specimen.jhodlof —Preceding undated comment added 18:12, 24 August 2009 (UTC).

Edit to improve sort order in category Pinus
I edited this to change the sort order on the page for the Category:Pinus. It had been set to alphabetize under Pine. That might make sense for categories where there are a lot of trees and a few of them are pines; then all the pines group together. But on the page where everything is a pine, it made more sense to alphabetize under Jeffrey. 140.147.236.194 (talk) 15:07, 13 April 2010 (UTC)Stephen Kosciesza

Description (smell) of Jeffrey Pine vs. Ponderosa pine
I would like to see someone who is familiar with both Jeffrey and Ponderosa pine edit the descriptions of the smell of both in both articles. I am not familiar with Jeffrey Pine, but I am personally familiar with the smell of Ponderosa Pine. It smells like vanilla to me and other people I know. I usually need to get my nose right next to the bark to smell it, but sometimes it is noticeable in a grove of trees on a hot day. The decriptions in both articles seem confusing and wrong to me because of this personal knowledge. Maybe Jeffrey has a stronger, more obvious smell or something else to distinguish it, but as they both seem to have the vanilla component, could someone please edit both articles appropriately? Feel free to delete this post after the editing is done. Thanks, Arthropod (talk) 04:03, 18 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Personal familiarity isn't the key factor here: that would be original research, which goes against the guidelines of the encyclopedia. Given that perceived scent may vary by person, and that people may mix up Ponderosa Pine and Jeffrey Pine, I think it's best to rely on reliable sources, such as natural history guides or botany guides. If you can find a reliable source that says that Ponderosa Pines smell like vanilla, then we can put that in. In the meanwhile, we have a reliable source that says that Ponderosa Pine does not smell like vanilla (Schoenherr's Natural History of California). Editors at Talk:Ponderosa Pine have not yet found reliable sources that say that Ponderosa Pines smell like vanilla. —hike395 (talk) 05:18, 18 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Here is a published reference in support of Arthropod's observation (which I and many of my friends in Oregon, beyond the range of Jeffrey pine, have also commonly made). "Ponderosa pine...is best recognized by its...cinnamon-coloured scaly bark that smells of vanilla in the hot sun." The source is a widely used field guide in the Pacific Northwest: Pojar and MacKinnon, 1994, "Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast," p.38 (in the entry for shore pine). These can be difficult species to distinguish--as far as I know, Jeffrey pine's downward curving scale barbs and generally larger cones are the most reliable field characteristics. Having just returned from a trip to an area where both species exist, I can attest--at least if the cone-based characters did not fail me in identifying the trees correctly--that smell is not a helpful diagnostic in distinguishing the two (sample size of two individuals). It would be great to push back against this common claim which doesn't hold up at least for many people. OminousBagel (talk) 16:11, 26 October 2018 (UTC)


 * ✅ --- I edited this article to remove the distinction of scent with Pinus ponderosa, and edited that page to include a source to its possible vanilla scent. —hike395 (talk) 03:41, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Whitebark Pine which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 03:29, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Requested move 27 October 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: moved (page mover nac) Flooded  with them hundreds  11:46, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Jeffrey pine → Pinus jeffreyi – WP:FLORA is the guideline that governs the naming of plant articles. It states Scientific names are to be used as article titles in all cases except when a plant has an agricultural, horticultural, economic or cultural use that makes it more prominent in some other field than in botany; e.g. rose, apple, watermelon. I believe that human use of Pinus jeffreyi is not common, therefore this article should be at the scientific name. Also, Pinus ponderosa is at a scientific name, and these two articles on closely related pines should be consistently named. —hike395 (talk) 03:37, 27 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Oppose – seriously, we don't use Ponderosa pine? Weird. Dicklyon (talk) 04:28, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi, . Can you say more about why you're opposing? —hike395 (talk) 04:47, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
 * This moving toward scientific names is at odds with our usual naming criteria. When species have very commonly used names, we should stick with them.  If you want consistency with Ponderosa pine, a better fix is in the other direction. These trees are important and well known in forestry, landscaping, and so forth, not just names of interest to botanists.  Many thousands of refs talk about them without mentioning the scientific names, which remain obscure to most readers who are otherwise familiar with the topics. Dicklyon (talk) 14:46, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
 * There was a brief move discussion in 2012 at Talk:Pinus ponderosa (after an attempted cut-andn-paste move). The argument then was that "Western yellow pine" was just as common as "Ponderosa pine" in forestry. In general book usage, "Western yellow pine" seems to have died off in the 1930s (Google ngram link).
 * I think it would be helpful to somehow quantify how common the human uses are of either the Ponderosa pine or the Jeffrey pine. —hike395 (talk) 20:13, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Later: I am having problems finding evidence of widespread horicultural or forestry use of Jeffrey pine. (There is some lumber use of Ponderosa pine, but it is considered indistinguishable from Lodgepole pine and is often mixed together). Thus, I would stick with my proposal to Move. —hike395 (talk) 18:08, 28 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Support per nom and per this prior RM: Talk:Pinus albicaulis. Why did so many pine articles avoid being moved to their scientific names back when all the others were moved? &mdash;Xezbeth (talk) 04:59, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Support: with redirects it's not a great imposition either way, but I prefer consistency in naming plant articles, which means following WP:FLORA. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:02, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
 * PS: The British English vernacular name is Jeffrey's Pine. Lavateraguy (talk) 09:59, 30 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Support Using scientific name titles is CONSISTENT with 99% of plant articles. Scientific names are more PRECISE than vernacular names that may refer to multiple taxa, and are more NATURAL titling solution when multiple vernacular name refer to the same taxon. RECOGNIZABLE; this isn't a tree that is particularly widely known by it's vernacular name, people familiar with this topic but not necessarily experts are still likely to recognize the scientific name, and those familiar with this tree species that don't recognize the scientific name won't be scared off by a scientific name title. CONCISE?: 2 words either way, 3 more characters for the scientific name. So yeah, the logic that informs the WP:FLORA guideline. Plantdrew (talk) 07:13, 3 November 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Wiki Education assignment: California Natural History
— Assignment last updated by Rostheboat04 (talk) 06:10, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Adding use of sap and discovery details
I will be adding a sentence about how the pine sap was crystallized and eaten, as well as small details related to John Jeffrey's discovery of this species. For the latter, I will create a Taxonomy section in the page. NikoPico (talk) 17:51, 16 October 2022 (UTC)