CONIFERS. 



8ILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



59 



PINUS BALFOURIANA. 



Foxtail Pine. 



Leaves in 5-leaved clusters, rigid, incurved, from 1 to lj inches in length. Cones 

 subcylindrical, from 3J to 5 inches long, their scales furnished with minute incurved 

 persistent spines. 



Pinus Balfouriana, A. Murray, Oregon Exped. i. t. 3, f . 1 

 (1853). — Gordon, Pinetum, 217. — Henkel & Hochstet- 

 ter, Syn. Nadelh. 109. — Bolander, Proc. Cal. Acad. iii. 

 318. — Carriere, Traite Conif. ed. 2, 425. — (Nelson) 

 Senilis, Pinacece, 104. — Hoopes, Evergreens, 149. — 

 Engelmann, Trans. St. Louis Acad. iv. 179; Brewer & 

 Watson Bot. Cal. ii. 125. — Veitch, Man. Conif. 175. — 

 Lawson, Pinetum Brit. i. 11, f. 1-5. — Sargent, Forest 

 Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 191. — Lemmon, 

 Rep. California State Board Forestry, ii. 71, 86, t. 



(Pines of the Pacific Slope) ; West-American Cone- 

 Bearers, 26. — Steele, Proc. Am. Pharm. Assoc. 1889, 

 234 (The Pines of California). — Mayr, Wald. Nordam. 

 354, t. 7, f. — Beissner, Handb. Nadelh. 272. — Masters, 

 Jour. R. Hort. Soc. xiv. 225. — Hansen, Jour. R. Hort. 

 Soc. xiv. 349 (Pinetum Danicum). — Merriam, North 

 American Fauna, No. 7, 339 (Death Valley Exped. 

 ii.). — Coville, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. iv. 221 (Bot. 

 Death Valley Exped.). — Koehne, Deutsche Dendr. 32. 



A tree, usually thirty or forty feet in height, with a short trunk from twelve to twenty-four 

 inches in thickness, but occasionally ninety feet high, with a tall straight tapering stem five feet in 

 diameter. 1 In early life the short stout branches stand out from the stem in regular whorls, and form 

 a narrow compact pyramid ; later they turn upward, and in middle life a few of the specialized upper 

 branches, growing more rapidly than the others and than those below them, push out and become long, 

 pendulous, and often contorted, forming the open irregular and picturesque usually pyramidal head of 

 the mature tree, with mostly erect upper branches and long rigid more or less spreading branchlets 

 clothed at the extremities only with dense brush-like masses of lustrous foliage. On the stems and 

 branches of young trees the bark is thin, smooth, and snow-white ; and on old trunks it is from one 

 half to three quarters of an inch in thickness, dark red-brown and deeply divided into broad connected 

 flat ridges broken by cross fissures into nearly square plates, separating on the surface into small closely 

 appressed scales ; or, when the outer scales are worn away by the storms of the Sierras, the bark is 

 bright cinnamon-red. The branchlets are stout, and when they first appear are slightly puberulous and 

 dark orange-brown, becoming after a few seasons dark gray-brown or sometimes nearly black, and for 

 many years are roughened by the persistent thickened dark brown bases of the scales of the branch- 

 buds. These are broadly ovate, gradually contracted and long-pointed at the apex, and covered by ovate 

 acute light chestnut-brown lustrous scales, the terminal bud being about one third of an inch in length 

 and nearly twice as large as the lateral buds. The leaves are crowded, pressed against the branches, 

 and borne in clusters of five, their bud-scales forming loose scarious sheaths about an eighth of an inch 

 in length, the upper portion soon becoming reflexed, withering and falling off, while the thicker base 

 does not entirely disappear until the end of several years ; they are stout, rigid, incurved, acute at 

 the apex with thick callous tips, entire, dark green and lustrous on the back, pale and marked on 

 the two ventral faces with numerous conspicuous rows of stomata, and from an inch to an inch and a 

 half long; they contain a single fibro-vascular bundle and two dorsal resin ducts surrounded by 

 strengthening cells, which also occur under the epidermis usually in two layers, but at the angles of the 

 leaf often in three ; 2 forming dense brush-like tufts from twelve to eighteen inches in length at the 

 extremities of the wand-like branches, they persist for ten or twelve years. The staminate flowers, 



1 Muir, The Mountains of California, 216 (as Pinus aristata). - Coulter & Rose, Bot. Gazette, xi. 304. 



