24 PINES 



There is another glaring anomaly in their system, 

 so far as ternate (three leaves in a bundle) Pines are 

 concerned, and that has reference to the deciduous 

 habits of their basal sheaths. 



In the case of the Bungeana, it falls away the first 

 year. In the case of the P. Gerardiana it remains 

 until the second year, and then disappears, a pro- 

 ceeding which is also another novelty in all Pine 

 tradition. Though these sort of departures from 

 the true paths of strict orthodoxy are only ques- 

 tions at most of disconcerting interest to the advanced 

 botanist, they ought to be seized upon as tokens of 

 serviceable help to identification by the less-advanced 

 student. They are some of those little apparitional 

 differences that should be of subtle assistance to the 

 dilettante, and are well worth looking out for when 

 he comes across an unfamiliar-looking three-leaved 

 Pine. 



It is for these two habits, peculiar to themselves, 

 among the three-leaved lot, this shedding of bark 

 and basal sheath, that these two Pines have been 

 handcuffed together in amicable bondage, and formed 

 into a little duumvirate of partnership, in a group 

 of their own. 



P. Bungeana. — The branchlets of the Bungeana 

 at Kew are of a greyish green, and the several can- 

 delabra-formed stems (of one of the two trees) are of 

 an ashen-grey colour. This appearance may be 

 mainly an effect due to a life spent in a begrimed 

 atmosphere, and traceable to those same artificial 

 causes that are so apt 'to temporarily deface a chimney 

 sweep's weekday countenance. As the tree appears 

 there, it certainly looks to the unsophisticated visitor 

 more like a bit of beechwood that has done time in 

 a colliery pit, and lost the glamour of its pristine 

 shine, than a specimen of plant life that some day 



