8 PINES 



STROBI GROUP 



You may as well forbid the mountain Pines, 

 To wag their high tops, and to make a noise. 

 When they are fretted with the gusts of Heaven. 



Shakespeare. 



Strobi Group of Pines : P. Excelsa, Peuke, 

 Ayacahuite, Buonapartea, Lambertiana, 

 MoNTicoLA, Strobus, Parviflora 



The first group of the Quinae — or five-leaves-in-a- 

 bundle Pines — take their group name from the P. 

 Strobus, an individual member of the group, that we 

 know more familiarly as the Weymouth Pine. 



This P. Strobus owes the origin of its name to a 

 Pine encountered by Pliny the Elder of Pompeian and 

 eruptive Vesuvius fame. We learn from the original 

 authority of his own pages (in his work entitled 

 Naturalis Historia) that Pliny godfathered sur- 

 nominally a Pine to which he gave the name Strobus. 

 What tree precisely the renowned naturalist and 

 historian had in mind when he bestowed the title 

 there is neither jot nor tittle of evidence extant to 

 give us information. At this distant date we take 

 it that anyone who so wishes may be allowed to 

 picture for himself, without consulting further any 

 modern authority, his own conception of the tree 

 that Pliny was thinking about, so long as that idea 

 coincides with the idea of the original description. 



We know — or, to put it more correctly, we have 

 learnt that the Greek word o-rpo^o^ signifies a top, 

 so we have to conclude that the tree named recalled 

 to the mental vision of this great Roman, Caius 

 Plinius Secundus (to give him his name in full), the 

 material outline of the fashionable top of his day. 

 Many kinds of tops at the suggestion of this simile at 

 once flit before our half-forgotten memories of an 



