1220 Rural School Leaflet 



leaves, borne in clusters of two, three, or five needles; (2) the cones, in 

 which the little seeds are borne; and (3) the wood, which always contains 

 more or less pitch, or resin. These characters distinguish the coniferous 

 (cone-bearing) trees from the broad-leaved trees. The term " evergreen " 

 should not be applied to the pines, spruces, and firs, because there are 

 other trees, as the holly and the live oak, which retain their leaves through- 

 out the winter and are just as truly evergreen as is the pine or the spruce. 

 Then, again, there is the larch, about which we learned last year 

 (Rural School Leaflet for September, 19 12, page 160), which 

 bears cones and yet sheds its leaves every year. The leaves of 

 the larch are needle-shaped, it bears cones, and there is some resin 

 in the wood, and therefore it clearly belongs to the same family as 

 do pines, firs, spruces, and hemlocks. In order to avoid all 

 confusion, therefore, I would suggest that we learn to call all 

 cone-bearing trees " conifers," which means " cone-bearers." 

 Then let us call the others "broadleaf trees"; this will properly 

 include the live oaks and the holly, and will do away with the 

 confusing term " deciduous " (leaf-shedding) trees. Another 

 term that is frequently heard is " hardwoods." As generally 

 used, this term means the broadleaf trees, although there are 

 some conifers with very hard wood — yellow pine, for example - — 

 and some " hardwoods," or " broadleaf " trees, with very soft 

 wood, such as the poplar and the willow. The use of confusing 

 terms should be abandoned and the terms " conifer " and 

 "broadleaf," while sounding a little strange at first, will express 

 our meaning more nearly. 



The pines are nearly all of great value because of their wood, 

 pi ne which is strong for its weight, straight-grained, and easily 

 needle worked — that is, carpenters have little difficulty in planing and 

 shaping it to their purposes. Some of the pines have very 

 hard, heavy, resinous wood, as the southern yellow pine; but our 

 northern white pine is light and soft and contains only a moderate 

 amount of resin. The white pine was formerly the most important 

 timber tree of all the northeastern States, and many millions of board 

 feet of white pine have been cut from the forests of New York State 

 within the past century. It is still considered a very valuable tree, and 

 lumbermen are always glad when they can find any white pine to cut 

 because they know that it will bring a good price in the markets. 



The white pine is a tall, straight-trunked tree, often reaching a height 

 of one hundred and twenty-five feet in the dense forests of the Adirondack 

 Mountains. When growing in the woods the trunk is frequently clear 

 of all branches for sixty or seventy feet, but when grown in the open, 



