THE CONIFEROUS FORESTS OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICA. I 95 



Texas, and several other places just outside of the range of this 

 tree. 



Both species when mature have bark thick enough to with- 

 stand any ordinary forest fire, and the dead leaves in the woods 

 in which they grow are likely to be burned nearly every year, 

 with little apparent injury to the trees. Trees of either species 

 less than ten years old probably suffer somewhat from fire, 

 however. 



Both are very abundant and important timber trees, not 

 far inferior to the long-leaf pine mentioned below, and together 

 they are now being cut at the rate of several billion feet annually. 

 Probably even more trees have been cut by farmers than by 

 lumbermen, for the soil in which they grow is adapted to many 

 staple crops. They reproduce themselves very readily in 

 abandoned fields, however, so that they are in no immediate 

 danger of exhaustion. 



The Black Pine ^ {Finus serotina), which looks very much 

 like P. Tceda, but is more closely related to P. rigida (whose 

 range it overlaps very little, if at all), is strictly confined to the 

 sandier parts of the coastal plain, where the summers are wetter 

 than the winters. It is frequent from south-eastern Virginia to 

 central Florida and south-eastern Alabama, but not very 

 abundant except in eastern North Carolina, where it is the 

 dominant and characteristic tree of the " pocosins." Its favourite 

 habitat is sour, sandy or peaty swamps, where the water-level 

 varies little throughout the year. 



Its relations to fire have not been specially investigated. Its 

 wood is similar to that of P. Tceda, from which it is not usually 

 distinguished in the lumber markets. 



The Cypress ( Taxodium disfichurri) is one of our most interest- 

 ing trees, from several points of view, and a great deal has been 

 written about it. It ranges from Delaware and south-western 

 Indiana to Florida (within two degrees of the Tropic of Cancer) 

 and Texas, and is almost confined to the coastal plain. It is 

 usually abundant where it grows, but more or less associated 

 with other deciduous trees. 



This is a swamp tree, growing naturally only where the 

 ground is alternately dry and overflowed. It can stand flooding 



^ This is the name by which it goes in Georgia. In the books it is desig- 

 nated as "pond-pine," a rather inappropriate and perhaps wholly arbitrary 

 name. 



