conifers. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 81 



scaly plates, with rigid leaves in clusters of two or of three and from three to six inches in length, 

 staminate flowers an inch long, and green cones two or three or rarely four inches in length, with thin 

 scales armed with slender prickles hooked backward, is the Yellow Pine of Nebraska, where it is 

 distributed from Long Pine Creek, a tributary of the Niobrara River a few miles east of the one 

 hundredth meridian, through the western and northwestern parts of the state; 1 this is the most 

 common tree of the mountain forests of the Black Hills of South Dakota ; it occurs on several of the 

 mountain ranges of Wyoming and of eastern Montana, and is the Yellow Pine of Colorado, where it is 

 common between six and ten thousand feet above the sea, forming open stunted forests with the Nut 

 Pine, the Juniper, and the Douglas Spruce ; 2 and of the mountain ranges of eastern and southern 

 Utah; it is also the Yellow Pine of western Texas, where it is common, and the most valuable 

 timber-tree on several mountain ranges, 3 and of northern New Mexico and Arizona, forming on the 

 Colorado plateau, at elevations from seven thousand to eight thousand two hundred feet, one of the 

 most extensive Pine forests of the continent, here sometimes ascending to nearly nine thousand, and 

 descending to four thousand five hundred feet above the sea-level. 4 



The Yellow Pine, 5 which often forms a large part of the forest on the mountains of southern 

 Arizona, frequently differs from more northern forms of Pinus ponderosa in its much longer and 

 broader leaves in clusters of three, which are sometimes fourteen or fifteen inches in length and one 

 sixteenth of an inch wide, in the shape of its cones made more oblique by the greater development of 

 the scales on their upper side, and in its mammillate projecting umbos armed with slender prickles. On 

 the Chiricahua Mountains of southern Arizona a form 6 is common which appears to connect this tree 

 with others of the species ; its leaves are more slender, and usually from twelve to fourteen inches long, 

 in clusters of three or rarely of four or five, and its cones vary from three to five inches in length, their 

 somewhat thickened scales terminating in prominently elevated or, toward the base of the cones, in 

 mammillate umbos armed with straight slender prickles. 



Pinus ponderosa is the principal timber-tree of eastern Washington and Oregon, of western 

 Montana, Idaho, and the Black Hills of South Dakota, and of western Texas, New Mexico, and 

 Arizona. It produces heavy hard and strong but ultimately brittle comparatively fine-grained wood, 

 which is not durable in contact with the soil ; it is light red, with almost white sapwood, which is 

 sometimes more than two hundred years old, but varies greatly on different individuals and in different 

 parts of the country in the number of its layers of annual growth. It contains broad or narrow very 



1 In Nebraska the Yellow Pine extends from the border of Wyo- This peculiar tree was discovered in the autumn of 1877 on the 

 niing along Pine Ridge and the Niobrara River to the eastern southern slopes of the Santa Rita Mountains in southern Arizona, 

 boundary of Rock and Keya Paha Counties, and on the North growing with Quercus hypoleuca just below the forests of Pinus 

 Platte as far east as Deuel County. The remnants of its dead Arizonica and Pinus Chihuahuana, by Dr. Heinrich Mayr of the 

 trunks in many canons of Loup River and in Custer, Valley, Greely, Bavarian Forest Department, who described it as a tree sixty feet 

 and Lincoln Counties, show that it once ranged farther east, and high, with stout tortuous branches and deeply furrowed dark brown 

 covered a larger part of the state (Bessey, Bull. Torrey Bot. Club, bark. (See, also, Brandegee, Garden and Forest, v. 111. — Tourney, 

 xiv. 189 ; Am. Nat. xxi. 928 ; Rep. Nebraska State Board Agric. Garden and Forest, viii. 22, f. 4.) 



1894, 100 ; Garden and Forest, viii. 102). 6 This is probably the Pinus Apacheca of Lemmon (Erythea, ii. 



2 Brandegee, Bot. Gazette, iii. 32. 103, t. 3 [1894] ; West- American Cone-Bearers, 36), and is a com- 

 8 Havard, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus. viii. 503. mon form of Yellow Pine on the mountains of southern New Mex- 

 a Merriam, North American Fauna, iii. 121. ico and Arizona, varying greatly in the length and breadth of 

 5 Pinus ponderosa, var. Mayriana. its leaves and in the size of its cones. A fruiting branch of this 



Pinus latifolia, Sargent, Garden and Forest, ii. 496, f. 135 (not form, gathered by Professor J. W. Tourney on the Chiricahua 



Pinus sylvestris latifolia, Gordon, nor Pinus contorta, var. latifolia, Mountains in 1896, is figured on plate dlxv. f. 2. This Yellow 



Engelmann) (1889). — Beissner, Handb. Nadelh. 259. — Masters, Pine, which is the largest tree of these forests, often produces a 



Jour. R. Hort. Soc. xiv. 232 (excl. syn. Pinus latisquamd). — massive tall trunk covered with thick cinnamon-red bark broken 



Koehne, Deutsche Dendr. 36. — Lemmon, West-American Cone- into great plates and stout tortuous branches which form a broad 



Bearers, 36. open round-topped head. The four or five-leaved clusters first 



Pinus Engelmanni, Lemmon, Erythea, i. 134 (not Torrey nor noticed by Professor Tourney on these trees on the Chiricahua 



Carriere [1893]). Mountains in the spring of 1897 appear to connect Pinus ponderosa 



Pinus Mayriana, Sudworth, Bull. No. 14, Forestry Div. U. S. with the closely related Pinus Arizonica, which chiefly differs from 



Dent Aaric 21 (1897). *- na ^ species in the greater number of leaves in its leaf-clusters. 



