14 



BEA UTIES OF BRITISH TREES. 



[Nov., 



made up of flaky scales deeply ridged down the stem, giving it a 

 curiously mottled effect. The branches, those 'thick mysterious 

 boughs/ as Tennyson calls them, are not usually large in proportion 

 to the trunk, but they are given off numerously in whorls, so that, 

 since when trees are grown together the lower boughs die off, as 

 Shakespeare says — 



* Knots, by the conflux of meeting sap, 

 Infect the sound pine, and divert his grain, 

 Tortive and errant from his course of growth.' 



The leaves, or ' needles/ are given off in pairs from the axil of 

 a membranous, fringed sheath. They do not exceed two or three 

 inches in length, although in allied species they are sometimes as 

 much as a foot long ; they are grooved along their upper surface, and 

 finely toothed throughout their length ; and 

 they remain on the tree for two or three 

 years. It is theh remarkable dark indigo- 

 tinted colour that lends to the tree the air of 

 gloom with which it is generally associated, 

 an effect which is heightened by the silent, 

 bare, needle-carpeted ground beneath them, 

 where scarcely anything will grow, owing 

 to the absence of light. At a slight distance 

 the young leaves produce quite the impression 

 of a bluish hue, which no doubt led the 

 Laureate to associate the Pine with * many 

 a cloudy hollow.' 



The tree generally flowers in May, its 

 flowers being monfficious, that is, both male 

 or pollen-bearing ones, and female, or seed- 

 bearing ones, being borne on the same 

 tree. The former are small, yellow spikes 

 of scales, each bearing a single two-chambered anther, and when 

 the pollen is discharged, producing as it does in the Granpidus 

 those ' showers of sulphur ' tLat once alarmed and amazed the 

 ignorant beholders, the whole catkin falls. The female cones on 

 the other hand remain, of course, until the seeds they contain have 

 been ripened and discharged. . ' They occur generally in twos or threes, 

 each of an ovoid outline tapering conically upwards, but hauging 

 when young in a drooping position by their stalks. The scales, 

 which are not many in number, are of a rhomboid form, and end in a 

 point which withers before they become woody. It is not as a rule 

 until the second year that they ripen , when the scales bend outwards, 

 so as to let the winged seeds escape from between them. Thus it is 

 that the close packing of the scales serves until the seeds are ripe. 



PINE CONE. 



