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230 SYLVA AMERICANA. 



because the names of Yellow Pine . and Pitch Pine, which are 

 more commonly employed, serve in the Middle States to designate 

 two species entirely distinct and extensively diffused. Towards 

 the north this tree first makes its appearance near Norfolk in 

 Virginia, where the pine-barrens begin. It seems to be especially 

 assigned to dry, sandy soils, and it is found without interruption 

 in the lower parts of the .Carolinas,* Georgia and the Floridas, 

 over a- tract of more than 600 miles long from north-east to 

 south-west, and more than 100 miles broad from the sea towards 

 the mountains of the Carolinas and Georgia. 



The mean stature of the long-leaved pine, is 60 or 70 feet 

 with an uniform diameter of 15 or 20 inches for two-thirds of 

 this height. Some stocks, favored by local circumstances, attain 

 much larger dimensions, particularly in East Florida. The bark 

 is somewhat furrowed, and the epidermis detaches itself in thin 

 transparent sheets. The leaves are about a foot long, of a 

 beautiful brilliant green, united to the number of three in the 

 same sheath, and collected in bunches at the extremity of the 

 branches : they are longer and more numerous on the young 

 stocks. The buds are very large, white, fringed, and not 

 resinous. The bloom takes place in April ; the male flowers form 

 masses of divergent violet-colored aments about two inches long ; 

 in drying they shed great quantities of yellowish pollen, which is 

 diffused by the wind and forms a momentary covering on the 

 surface of the land and water. The cones are very large, being 

 seven or eight inches long, and four inches thick when open, and 

 are armed with small, retorted spines. In the fruitful year they 

 are ripe about the middle of October, and shed their seeds the 

 same month. The kernel is of an agreeable taste, and is 

 contained in a thin, white shell, surmounted by a membrane ; in 

 every other species of American pine the shell is black. 



The wood of this tree contains but little sap ; trees fifteen 

 inches in diameter three feet from the ground frequently have 

 ten inches of heart. .Many stocks of this size are felled for 

 commerce, and none are received for exportation of which the 

 heart is not ten inches in diameter when squared. The concentric 

 circles in a trunk fully developed are close and at equal distances, 



