66 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



at the but, and a height from root to top of sixty -two feet six 

 inches, having thus grown almost an inch in diameter and two 

 feet in height annually. 



I. 1. Sp. 2. The Pitch Pine. Pinus rigida. L. 



Figured in Lambert's Pinus, Plate 16. 



Michaux ; Sylva, III, plate 143. 



Loudon; Arboretum, VIII, beautifully, plate 326. 



This tree is distinguished by its leaves being in threes, by the 

 rigidity and sharpness of the scales of its cones, by the rough- 

 ness of its bark, and by the denseness of the brushes of its stiff, 

 crowded leaves. It has not great beauty, but it produces an 

 agreeable contrast, by the deep green of its foliage, with the 

 lighter colors of the deciduous trees ; and there is an irregularity 

 about it, which often gives a single tree a picturesque appear- 

 ance when seen at a distance. It is free from the stiffness of 

 most of the other pines, and a hill clothed with it is a desirable 

 addition to a prospect. 



The pitch pine is commonly forty or fifty feet high, and one 

 or two feet in diameter at base. In the most favorable situa- 

 tions in which it occurs, which are sands mixed with loam, and 

 plentifully supplied with moisture, it sometimes attains the 

 height of seventy or eighty feet, and even more, with a diame- 

 ter of nearly three feet. Such trees are now very rare. About 

 the ponds in Plymouth, where these pines rise considerably 

 above the uniform growth of oaks, they must be seventy feet 

 high, and I found the average size of several of the largest to be 

 five feet and seven inches in circumference, at three feet from the 

 ground. In other parts of the lower counties, I have found the 

 largest sometimes over six feet. In a single instance, the cir- 

 cumference was six feet seven inches.* 



On the hills in the southwestern corner of the State, they are 



* One which I measured in Lyman, York County, Maine, was eight feet six 

 inches in circumference at the ground, seven feet six inches at three and one-half 

 feet above, and, by the estimation of a friend who was experienced in trees, 

 ninety feet high. Several measured in Chester, N. H., were over seven feet in 

 girth at the ground, and one was seven feet at three feet from the surface, and 

 eighty feet high. 



