A 
PINES (FIGURE 2) 
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Characterized by their needles in bundles or “fascicles,” and by 
their generally tall and cone-shaped or columnar habit, at least in 
youth and middle age, pines are the most distinct botanically of all 
the conifers, and the most useful to man. Nearly eighty species 
are known, all in the northern hemisphere, only one species crossing 
the equator into the mountains of Java. 
Pine leaves, often called needles, grow in clusters on very short 
branches. Seedling leaves are single, known as primary leaves. 
Soon, i their axils, tiny branchlets appear, each bearing the char- 
acteristic number of secondary leaves. Thereafter the primary 
‘aves gradually become shorter, eventually being reduced to scales 
enclosing the winter buds. 
More extensively than in any other conifer, the wood of Pinus 
is traversed lengthwise and crosswise by tiny canals—resin duets— 
which transport resin through the tree. These resin ducts con- 
tinue into the leaves, and the number and position of the resin 
ducts there are characteristic of each species. The resin, when 
collected and distilled, as is done with some of the southern pines, 
a 
yields turpentine. The residue, after distillation, is rosin, which 
has a variety of economic uses—for paints, soap, sealingwax, the 
glaze on paper, and for medicine. 
The pines may be grouped primarily into the soft, and the hard 
or pitch pines; the former with soft wood and sheaths of the leaf 
clusters deciduous at the base, the latter with harder, heavier wood, 
often densely impregnated with resin, and, with one exception, 
persistent leaf sheaths, 
3est adapted for forest planting in this region is the red pine 
(Pinus resinosa), which grows rapidly, has fairly soft wood and 1s 
not injured by the white pine weevil nor subject to the blister rust 
disease. However, of late years it has become infested with the 
Iuropean pine-shoot moth (/t/iwactonia buoliana). This insect, 
which infests the buds of young trees, can be controlled if the 
infested buds are collected in late winter and burned. As a genus, 
the pines are extremely valuable for forest planting because they 
are not particular as to soil, and will flourish in sandy or rocky sites, 
