64 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA, conifers. 



are borne in short crowded spikes and are oval and about half an inch in length, with dark orange-red 

 anthers terminating in obscurely denticulate crests, and are surrounded by four involucral bracts. The 

 pistillate flowers are subterminal, solitary or in pairs, oblong-oval and about one third of an inch in 

 length, with broadly ovate dark purple scales abruptly narrowed into long slender awns, and are raised 

 on short stout peduncles covered by oblong pointed light chestnut-brown bracts. During the winter 

 the young cones are broadly ovate, erect, and about an inch long and half an inch broad ; beginning 

 to grow the following June when the flowers open, they soon become horizontal and then semipendent, 

 and when fully grown at midsummer they are ovate, dark purple-brown, nearly sessile, and from three 

 to three and a half inches long and about an inch and a half wide, with thin narrow scales rounded 

 at the apex, the exposed portions being almost equally four-sided and only slightly thickened and trans- 

 versely keeled, with central elevated knob-like umbos terminating in slender incurved light red-brown 

 prickles often nearly a quarter of an inch in length and so brittle that they frequently break from the 

 mature cone ; the cones open and shed their seeds late in September or in October, the exposed portion 

 of the scales becoming dark purple-brown and the remainder dull red. The seeds are nearly oval, 

 compressed, light brown conspicuously mottled with black, and about a quarter of an inch in length, 

 with a thin crustaceous coat and an embryo with six or seven cotyledons ; their wings are broadest at 

 the middle, light brown, about one third of an inch long and often a quarter of an inch broad. 



Nowhere very abundant and found only on a few mountain ranges, Pinus aristata grows on high 

 rocky or gravelly slopes, and is distributed from the outer range of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, 

 where it is scattered through the upper borders of the forest between eight and twelve thousand 

 feet above the sea-level, 1 westward to the mountain ranges of southern Utah, central and southern 

 Nevada, 2 southwestern California, 3 and the San Francisco peaks of northern Arizona. 4 It rarely forms 

 pure forests, being usually mixed below with Pinus Jlexilis and above with Picea Engelmanni, and 

 reaches the upper limits of tree-growth, where it is frequently shrubby with short contorted stems. 



The wood of Pinus aristata is light, soft, not strong, and close-grained ; it is red, with thin nearly 

 white sapwood, and contains thin dark-colored inconspicuous bands of small summer cells, few resin 

 passages, and numerous obscure medullary rays. 5 The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 

 0.5572, a cubic foot weighing 34.72 pounds. It is occasionally used for the timbers of mines and for 

 fuel. 



Pinus aristata was first made known to science by Dr. C. C. Parry, who discovered it on Pike's 

 Peak, Colorado, in 1861, 6 and the following year sent seeds to the Botanic Garden of Harvard College. 

 In the Atlantic States Pinus aristata grows very slowly, the plants raised from Dr. Parry's seeds 

 being after thirty-five years only about two feet high ; in England it grows more vigorously and has 

 produced cones. 7 



1 Parry, Trans. St. Louis Acad. ii. 123. — Rothrock, Wheeler's Rep. line with Picea Engelmanni at about eleven thousand five hundred 

 vi. 8, 9 (as Pinus Balfouriana). — Brandegee, Bot. Gazette, iii. 32. feet above the sea ; here it is only a prostrate shrub, but descend- 



2 The upper slopes of Prospect Mountain in central Nevada ing to nine thousand feet, where it is mingled with Pinus Jlexilis, it 

 between seven thousand five hundred and eight thousand feet above frequently attains a height of thirty or forty feet. 



the sea-level were formerly covered with an open forest of Pinus 6 Pinus aristata probably always grows slowly. The log speci- 



aristata. These trees have nearly all been cut to timber the mines men in the Jesup Collection of North American Woods in the 



in the neigboring town of Eureka. (See Sargent, Am. Jour. Sci. American Museum of Natural History, New York, cut near 



ser. 3, xvii. 419 [The Forests of Central Nevada], as Pinus Bal- Eureka, in central Nevada, is eighteen inches in diameter inside 



fouriana.') the bark and two hundred and eighty-nine years old, the sapwood 



8 In California Pinus aristata occurs on the summits of the Pana- being five eighths of an inch thick, with forty-four layers of annual 



mint and Inyo Mountains, and it is said to grow on the high Sierra growth. 



Nevadas east of the Yosemite Valley (Lemmon, Rep. California 6 A Pine branch without cones collected by Captain J. W. Gunni- 



State Board of Forestry, ii. 71, 87 [Pines of the Pacific Slope] ; West- son, U. S. Army, in 1853, in the Coochetopa Pass, Colorado, at an 



American Cone-Bearers, 26), but I have not seen specimens of this elevation of ten thousand feet, was believed by Engelmann to be 



tree from any part of the Sierras. of this species. 



4 On the San Francisco peaks Pinus aristata forms the timber 7 Webster, Gard. Chron. ser. 3, xx. 719, f. 126. 



