An old landslide--caused by creek at the bottom of the canyon--is being re-claimed by foothill / gray pines (
Pinus sabiniana).
Ground here is very dry through the summer, but can get intensely wet in the short rainy season--which allows for such landslides.
These foothill pines can handle extremely dry and hot summers, so they are often the only coniferous trees on these hot Western California foothills.
I love it when forests re-cover in areas of their loss. This pine tree is not commercially valuable for much of anything except ground stabilization--unless a person wants the pine nuts from the huge cones. And they are good to eat, but hard to access.
How did these trees come to be on this super steep, scarified slope?
Possibly the huge, hard cones rolled down the hill from pines higher up dropping some seeds as they rolled.
Or, more possibly, the squirrels chewed them out of the cones and carried them to good hiding places in stone crevices and buried them.
Squirrels don't mind these steep slopes at all.
The more obviously light green trees are poplars in the wetter ground right next to the small creek.
They grow there to make the picture pretty!
If anyone has other, better, or more accurate information, please do share it!
Angky.