100 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. conifers. 



cylindrical and about an inch and a half long, with yellow anthers terminating in orbicular obscurely 

 denticulate crests, and are surrounded by involucres of eight or ten bracts. The pistillate flowers are 

 oblong-oval, and from one half to three quarters of an inch in length, with ovate dark reddish brown 

 glaucous scales contracted into long incurved tips, and are raised on stout peduncles often an inch 

 and a half long and covered by ovate acuminate scarious bracts. The young cones grow rapidly, 

 soon becoming horizontal or pendent, and in the autumn they are oblong, full and rounded at the 

 apex, about two inches long and an inch and a half thick, with broadly ovate incurved light yellow- 

 brown scales rounded on the back and gradually narrowed into long rigid points ; when fully grown a 

 year later the cones are oval, acute, from ten to fourteen inches long, four or five inches thick, short- 

 stalked and pendent, with thick wide scales which are rounded above, their exposed portions being 

 much thickened into transversely flattened elongated knobs straight or curved backward, and 

 terminating in robust flattened more or less incurved spines from half an inch to an inch and a half in 

 length ; they are light yellow-brown on the outer surface and dark dull purple on the covered parts of 

 the scales, and, partly opening in the autumn and slowly losing their seeds, often remain for several 

 years on the branches. The seeds are oval, compressed, half an inch long, from one quarter to one 

 third of an inch wide, and dark chestnut-brown, with a thick coat produced into narrow lateral ridges ; 

 they contain a sweet oily albumen and an embryo with from eleven to fourteen cotyledons, and are 

 surrounded by their wings, which are thickened on the inner rim, thin and firm above, broadest above 

 the middle, oblique at the apex, nearly an inch longer than the seeds, about five eighths of an inch 

 wide, and lustrous and light chestnut-brown, with dark longitudinal stripes. 



Pinus Coulteri is scattered singly or in small groves through the coniferous forests on the dry 

 slopes and ridges or the gravelly benches a of the coast ranges of California at elevations from three to 

 six thousand feet above the sea from Mount Diabolo and the Santa Lucia Mountains to the Cuyamaca 

 Mountains, being most abundant on the San Bernardino and San Jacinto ranges, growing to its largest 

 size at elevations of about five thousand feet on their forest-clad ridges with Pinus ponderosa, Pinus 

 Lambertiana, and Abies concolor, and on dry southern slopes, where it is smaller but more abundant, 

 with Pinus attenuata. 



The wood of Pinus Coulteri is light, soft, not strong, brittle, and coarse-grained ; it is light red, 

 with thick nearly white sapwood, and contains broad conspicuous very resinous bands of small summer 

 cells, few large resin passages, and numerous prominent medullary rays. The specific gravity of the 

 absolutely dry wood is 0.4133, a cubic foot weighing 25.76 pounds. 2 It is occasionally used for fuel. 



The seeds were gathered and eaten by the Indians of southern California. 3 



Pinus Coulteri was discovered in 1832 by Thomas Coulter 4 on the Santa Lucia Mountains, and 

 was introduced into English gardens, probably in the same year, by David Douglas. 5 Valuable as an 

 ornamental plant only for the beauty of its massive cones, which are heavier than those of any other 

 Pine-tree, Pinus Coulteri is perfectly hardy in western and central Europe, where it has already grown 

 to a large size and produced its fruit. 6 



1 S. B. Parish, Zoe, iv. 351. 3 Newberry, Popular Science Monthly, xxxti. 35 (Food and Fibre 



2 Pinus Coulteri grows rapidly, at least while young. The log Plants of the North American Indians). 

 specimen in the Jesup Collection of North American Woods, in the 4 See iii. 84. 



American Museum of Natural History, New York, is twenty and 6 Loudon, Arb. Brit. iv. 2250, f . 2144, 2147. 



one half inches in diameter inside the bark, and only one hundred 6 Gard. Chron. n. ser. xxiii. 415, f . 74 ; 478 ; ser. 3, iv. 764, f. 



and eleven years old. The sapwood of this specimen is six and a, 109. 



quarter inches in thickness, with seventy-nine layers of annual 



growth. 



