18 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. conifers. 



age often rising above the ground near the tree into low buttresses, and furnished with few long tough 

 pliable wand-like rootlets. During its youth the branches of the White Pine are slender and horizontal 

 or slightly ascending, and are arranged in regular whorls, usually with five branches in a whorl, 

 clothing the stem to the ground for many years or until destroyed by the absence of light, and forming 

 a broad open conical head. When the tree, uncrowded by others, enjoys an abundance of light and 

 air, the lower branches often grow to a large size, the trunk remains short and becomes much thickened 

 at the base, and the breadth of the picturesque open head often equals the height of the stem ; but as 

 the White Pine grows naturally in the forest the lower branches die at the end of a few years, and the 

 trunk grows tall and straight, bearing branches only near the top. When it is pressed upon by trees of 

 equal height the branches remain short and form a narrow head ; but when the White Pine, which is 

 the tallest inhabitant of the forests of northeastern America, rises above the surrounding trees, the 

 lateral branches lengthen, sweep upward in long graceful curves, the upper ones ascending, and form a 

 broad open irregular head. 1 The bark on young stems and branches is thin, smooth, green tinged with 

 red, and lustrous during the summer ; on fully grown trunks it is from one to two inches thick, or at 

 the base of old trees often nearly four inches thick, and is deeply divided by shallow fissures into broad 

 connected ridges covered with small closely appressed scales. The branchlets are slender, and when 

 they first appear are usually coated with ferrugineous tomentum, which soon wears away ; and during 

 their first winter they are glabrous or occasionally slightly puberulous and dark orange-brown ; 

 gradually growing darker, in their second winter they are conspicuously marked by the small elevated 

 darker colored scars which are left by the falling of the short lateral branchlets that form the base of 

 the leaf-clusters and which do not entirely disappear until the end of four or five years. The branch- 

 buds are ovate-oblong or slightly obovate, acuminate and abruptly contracted at the apex into short 

 points, and are covered by ovate-lanceolate light chestnut-brown scales thin and scarious on the margins 

 and narrowed into long slender thread-like more or less spreading tips ; the terminal bud is about half 

 an inch long and an eighth of an inch wide, and is sometimes twice as large or often not much larger 

 than the lateral buds which surround it. The leaves are borne in clusters of five, and during the 

 winter are inclosed in minute broadly ovate bright green buds furnished at the apex with clusters of 

 short soft white hairs and inclosed under the scales of the branch-bud. The buds of the leaf-clusters 

 are covered by eight scales, which lengthen with the expanding leaves, increasing in length from 

 without inward, those of the outer ranks being at maturity ovate, rounded at the narrowed apex, dark 

 chestnut-brown, and much shorter than those of the inner ranks, which are oblong-obovate, rounded at 

 the apex, thin, lustrous, light chestnut-brown, often three quarters of an inch long and about an eighth 

 of an inch broad ; these scales soon fall, marking the abbreviated lateral branchlets with thin ring-like 

 scars. The leaves are soft and slender, bluish green, and whitened on the ventral sides with from three 

 to five conspicuous bands of stomata ; they contain a single fibro-vascular bundle and from one to three, 

 usually two, dorsal resin ducts, 2 and are sharply serrate, mucronate at the apex with pale-colored callous 

 tips, and from three to four inches in length ; they mostly turn yellow and fall in the September of 

 their second season, but sometimes persist, especially on shaded branches, through a second winter, and 

 then fall during the following June. The staminate flowers are oval, light brown, and about one 

 third of an inch long, with anthers which terminate in short crests, and are surrounded by from six 

 to eight involucral bracts. The pistillate flowers are cylindrical, subterminal, and about a quarter 



the roots certainly remain sound in the ground for long periods. White Pine-tree with branches which are usually produced in 



Formerly very durable fences were made in northern New England whorls of three, and are short, slender, and nearly erect, forming 



by standing on their edges stumps of the White Pine pulled with a dense low round-topped symmetrical head. Plants have been 



their roots from the ground by oxen. (See Belknap, History of raised in the Arnold Arboretum from the seeds of this tree, and a 



New Hampshire, iii. 108.) sma ll percentage reproduce its peculiar habit. 



1 For many years there has stood near the banks of the Mer- 2 Coulter & Rose, Bot. Gazette, xi. 261, t. 8, f. 1. 

 rimac River, in the town of Dracut, Massachusetts, a remarkable 



