124 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. conifers. 



cells in one or two layers under the epidermis, 1 and fall gradually and irregularly during their third 

 and fourth years. The staminate flowers are produced in crowded clusters, and are oblong and about 

 one third of an inch in length, with orange-brown anthers terminating in semiorbicular fimbriate crests, 

 and are surrounded by eight involucral bracts. The pistillate flowers are produced near the middle of 

 the shoot of the year, generally a little below and alternate with one or two lateral branehlets, and are 

 borne on long opposite spreading or somewhat ascending peduncles covered by chestnut-brown bracts, 

 those of the inner ranks being scarious on the margins and much reflexed ; they are subglobose, with 

 ovate pale green scales narrowed into long slender slightly recurved tips tinged with rose-color, and 

 with large orbicular bracts. The cones during their first winter are oblong, dark red-brown, and from 

 one half to three quarters of an inch in length, and when fully grown are oblong-conical, often 

 curved, dark green and lustrous, with the exception of the bright red-brown umbos and prickles, and 

 from two to three inches but usually about two inches and a half long and from an inch to an inch 

 and a quarter thick, with thin nearly flat scales rounded at the apex, their exposed portions being 

 only slightly thickened and conspicuously transversely keeled, with small dark elevated umbos armed 

 with stout or slender persistent prickles ; opening in the autumn, the cones slowly shed their seeds, 

 and, turning dark reddish brown on the exposed portions and dull red on the others, often remain on 

 the branches for three or four years longer. The seeds are nearly oval, full and rounded, slightly 

 ridged, and a quarter of an inch in length, with a thin pale brown rugose coat and an embryo usually 

 with five cotyledons ; their wings are broadest at the middle, dark chestnut-brown, lustrous, striate, one 

 third of an inch long and about one eighth of an inch wide. 



Pinus Virginiana is distributed from Middle Island, Long Island, and Clifton, Staten Island, 

 New York, southward generally near the coast to the valley of the Savannah River in central Georgia 

 and to northeastern Alabama, 2 and through eastern and middle Tennessee and Kentucky 3 to south- 

 eastern Indiana. 4 Usually small in the Atlantic states, where it grows only on light sandy soil and, 

 especially in Maryland and Virginia, spreads rapidly over fields exhausted by agriculture, it attains its 

 greatest size west of the Alleghany Mountains, frequently rising on the low hills or knobs of southern 

 Indiana to the height of over one hundred feet. 



The wood of Pinus Virginiana is light, soft, not strong, brittle, close-grained, and durable in 

 contact with the soil ; it is light orange-color, with thick nearly white sapwood, and contains broad 

 conspicuous resinous bands of small summer cells, few resin passages, and many thin medullary rays. 

 The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.5309, a cubic foot weighing 33.09 pounds. In the 

 country watered by the lower Potomac and James Rivers it is generally employed for fuel, 5 and in 

 Kentucky and Indiana it is sometimes manufactured into lumber and is also largely used for water-pipes 

 and pump-logs ; in Indiana tar was formerly obtained by burning the wood of this tree. 



The earliest account of Pinus Virginiana* was published by Plukenet in 1696 ; 7 and in 1739 it 

 was cultivated by Philip Miller 8 in the Physic Garden in Chelsea near London. 9 It is hardy and 

 ripens its seeds in eastern Massachusetts, but as an ornamental tree Pinus Virginiana has nothing to 

 recommend it, its chief value consisting in its ability to cover rapidly sterile and worn-out soils in the 

 middle Atlantic states. 



1 Coulter & Rose, Bot. Gazette, xi. 308. Clarke County and about twenty-five miles north of the Ohio River, 



2 In July, 1881, Pinus Virginiana was found by Dr. Charles and spreads along all the crests of the knobs almost to Vienna in 

 Mohr on rocky heights and hillsides, at an elevation of one thou- Scott County. 



sand and sixty-three feet above the sea, near Gadsden, Etowah 5 Ruffin, Russell's Magazine, iv. 37. 



County, Alabama. 6 p{ nus Virginiana is also sometimes called Cedar Pine and 



8 In Tennessee Pinus Virginiana ranges west to the valley of River Pine. (See Ruffin, I. c.) 



the Tennessee River in Hardin County, and occurs on the elevated 7 Pinus Virginiana binis brevioribus &f crassioribus setis, minori 



rolling hills of Stewart County ; and in Kentucky it is common in cono, singulis squamarum capitibus aculeo donatis, Aim. Bot. 297.— 



Boyle and Mercer, Barren and Edmonson Counties, in the northern Ray, Hist. PL iii. ; Dendr. 8. 



part of Christian County, and on Piney Creek in Trigg County. 8 See i. 38. 



4 In Indiana Pinus Virginiana extends northward to the Silver 9 Loudon. Arb. Brit. iv. 2192, f. 2068-2071. 

 Hills in the southwestern part of Scott County, near the line of 



