klein THE PINE 291 



areas. This work is so well done on the island of Nantucket and 

 the desert soil of Cape Cod, even those areas which are washed by 

 the spring tides, that the pitch pines have earned the regard of men. 

 Its light, reddish-brown timber is coarse and of slight value, 

 but this is forgiven. 



Pitch pines are rich in resin; the knots especially accumulate it, 

 and "pine knots" and "candlewood" are useful and familiar 

 household words in the regions where the pine grows. Kindling 

 wood and torches for midnight coon hunts are never wanting. 

 The resin is not the sap of the tree, as is generally supposed. 

 Pine sap is like other sap; the resin is a product of certain glands 

 of the tree, and is of great use to it in closing wounds and thus 

 keeping out the spores of destructive fungi. It is this effort of the 

 tree to heal its wounds that makes it pour resin into the cuts 

 made by the turpentine gatherers. This resin is taken to a 

 distillery, where the turpentine is given off as a vapor and con- 

 densed in a coiled tube which is kept cold. What is left is known 

 as "rosin." 



The "pitch is kindle of substance" which makes handling of the 

 sticks unpleasant business for tidy folks, gums the saws and makes 

 trouble in the mills. Sills and beams of houses were formerly 

 made of pitch-pine logs but now other kinds are preferred, and 

 these trees go into charcoal and fuel. The turpentine gatherer, 

 too, has left these trees to seek the richer pineries of the South and 

 West. There is small excuse for the pitch pine to stay on, were 

 it not for the one thing it does better than any other — it makes 

 glad the wilderness and the solitary place. 



The characteristics of this pine, in a few words, are these: 

 A gnarled, irregular tree 50 to 75 feet high, with short trunk and 

 rigid, rough branches. Bark thick, broken into plates by deep, 

 irregular fissures, scales thin; bark red or purple. Wood light 

 red, soft, durable, brittle, coarse. Leaves in threes, rigid, stout, 

 3 to s inches long, dark yellow-green; sheaths becoming black, 

 persistent. Flowers monoecious; staminate short, densely clus- 

 tered at base of season's shoot; pistillate lateral, in clusters, rosy 

 tinged, oval, short, stalked. Fruits biennial, 1 to 3-K" long- 

 ovate, scales with sharp, recurving beaks. Preferred habitat, 

 sandy uplands and cold swamps. Distribution, New Brunswick 

 to Georgia; west to Ontario and Kentucky. 



