48 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



CONIFERS. 



light chestnut-brown bracts, and are oblong, acute, and about one eighth of an inch in length, with 

 thick dark red scales. In the autumn the young cones are about half an inch in diameter and 

 horizontal ; the following spring they grow rapidly, and by the time the flowers open they are sometimes 

 nearly an inch long and three quarters of an inch broad ; when fully grown they are subglobose, 

 from an inch to almost two inches in breadth, and short-stalked or subsessile ; the exposed portions of 

 their light red-brown concave scales are rounded or acute at the apex, and much thickened and 

 quadrangular on the back, with prominent horizontal and less prominent longitudinal keels, the central 

 knob terminating in a dark-colored concave umbo bearing on its margin a small dark brown nearly 

 triangular much reflexed tip ; only a few of the central scales, which are about three quarters of an 

 inch broad, are fertile ; the others decrease in size toward both ends of the cone, and those at its base 

 are much reflexed and remain closed. The seeds are subcylindrical or slightly triangular, more or less 

 compressed at the pointed apex, full and rounded at the base, from one half to three quarters of an 

 inch long, about three eighths of an inch wide, nearly black on the lower side, and dark chestnut-brown 

 on the upper, where they are pressed upon by the bracts and scales above them ; the wings are light 

 chestnut-brown, membranaceous, and about one thirty-second of an inch wide, and remain attached to 

 the scales when the seeds fall ; the cotyledons vary from nine to fifteen in number. 



Pinus cembroides inhabits in southern Arizona the Santa Catalina, Rincon, Santa Rita, Huachuca, 

 and Chiricahua 1 Mountains generally above elevations of six thousand five hundred feet, and covers 

 their highest slopes and ridges, usually unmixed with other trees, and grows also on the Pinal, 

 Superstition, Caliuro, and Gila Mountains near the centre of the territory. 2 It occurs in Lower 

 California, 3 and spreads southward over the mountain ranges of northern Mexico, growing in the thin 

 soil of the hottest and most arid slopes and ledges, 4 or in Nuevo Leon on the cooler slopes and summits 

 of the foothills, often descending to within a few hundred feet of the level of the plain. 5 



The wood of Pinus cembroides is light, soft, and close-grained ; it is pale clear yellow, with thin 

 nearly white sapwood, and contains thin inconspicuous bands of small summer cells, occasional small 

 conspicuous resin passages, and numerous obscure medullary rays. The specific gravity of the abso- 

 lutely dry wood is 0.6512, a cubic foot weighing 40.58 pounds/ 1 



The large oily seeds supply the inhabitants of northern Mexico with an important article of food, 

 and are sold in large quantities in the markets of most Mexican towns. 



Pinus cembroides was discovered on the high mountains near Sultepec in Mexico about 1830 by 

 the Belgian naturalist Karwinsky ; 7 it was first found in the United States by Mr. C. G. Pringle 8 on 

 the Santa Catalina Mountains, Arizona, in June, 1882. It was introduced into European gardens by 

 Karl Theodor Hartweg 9 in 1846, and is now occasionally cultivated in those of southern Europe and 

 of northern Mexico. 



1 Pinus cembroides was collected on the Chiricahua Mountains 6 Pinus cembroides probably always grows slowly. The trunk in 

 in 1894 by Professor J. W. Tourney. (See Garden and Forest, the Jesup Collection of North American Woods in the American 

 Vlii - 22 Museum of Natural History, New York, is eight and three quar- 



2 Tourney, Garden and Forest, x. 152. ters inches in diameter inside the bark and one hundred and forty- 



3 Pinus cembroides was found in 1890 by Mr. T. S. Brandegee on six years old, with sapwood five eighths of an inch in thickness 

 the flat top of the Sierra de Laguna in Lower California, where it containing twenty-two layers of annual growth. 



sometimes grows to a height of fifty feet. (See Garden and Forest, 7 See i. 94. 



iv. 352, f. 59.) 8 See ix# 129 . 



4 Pringle, Garden and Forest, i. 430. 9 See ii. 34. 



5 Pringle, I. c. iii. 338. 



