52 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



part they are linear, needle-like or awl-shaped and stiff, as in 

 the true pines, in which they vary, in different species, from two 

 or three to twelve and even eighteen inches in length, in bun- 

 dles of from two to six in a bundle. In the firs and spruces 

 they are shorter, and flat or prismatic ; still more so in the juni- 

 per and the yew ; and in the cedar and cypress they are reduced 

 to little more than pointed scales.* All of this family may be 

 considered as destitute of stipules ; the apparent stipules some- 

 times seen on the shoots from the stump of the pitch pine, being 

 in reality solitary leaves, with bundles of leaves springing from 

 their axils. 



The buds exhibit a great variety of structure. Often they 

 are naked, as in the juniper and arbor vitse, the apparent scales 

 taking, as they expand, the form of true leaves. Sometimes, 

 as in the several species of pine, they are covered by scales 

 totally different from leaves. They are sometimes, as in the 

 fir, enveloped by resin ; sometimes free from it. They usually, 

 as in the pines, proceed only from the extremity of the trunk or 

 branches, and contain the annual addition to the stem, and the 

 whorl of branches. 



With very few exceptions, the pines are monoecious, the male 

 and female flowers being in different parts of the same plant, 

 both usually disposed in cones or catkins, but totally unlike in 

 structure. The male flowers consist of one or more stamens 

 usually attached, with or without a stalk, to a scale, which, 

 however, is sometimes wanting. The catkins of the male flow- 

 ers are far more numerous than the cones of the female flowers. 

 The yellow pollen, which is very abundant, often falls in such 

 quantities upon the branches and leaves below, and upon the 

 neighboring plants, as to cover them ; and being as light and 

 fine as dust, it has been sometimes carried by the wind from a 

 forest of pines and spread upon the ground at a distance. This 

 affords a probable explanation of the stories which have been told, 



* In some of the foreign genera, they are broader and lanceolate, as in podocar- 

 pus ; whilst in a few, as the agathis and ginkgo, they expand into a resemblance to 

 the leaves of other dicotyledonous vegetables. In the remote genera callitris and 

 ephedra, they are so small, scale-like and distant, as to give the plant the appear- 

 ance of being destitute of leaves. 



