136 SILVA OF NORTE AMERICA. conifers. 



internal, and strengthening cells in small bundles under the epidermis and between the numerous rows 

 of stomata. 1 The staminate flowers are produced in elongated loose spikes, and are oblong and about a 

 third of an inch long and an eighth of an inch thick, with yellow anthers terminating in orbicular 

 denticulate crests, and are surrounded by about eight involucral bracts. The pistillate flowers are 

 clustered, lateral, and subglobose or oblong, with ovate scales narrowed into elongated slender tips, and 

 large orbicular bracts, and are raised on stout peduncles a third of an inch in length and covered 

 by broadly ovate acute light chestnut-brown bracts scarious on the margins. The cones, which become 

 horizontal soon after the fertilization of their ovules, during the first winter are subglobose and about an 

 inch in length, with elongated stout incurved spines, and when fully grown in the following autumn 

 they are oblong-conical, oblique at the base by the greater development of the scales on the upper than 

 on the lower side, sessile, deflexed, in clusters usually of three or four or rarely of seven or eight, from 

 two to three and a half inches long and about two inches thick, and light green, turning when fully 

 ripe light brown and lustrous, with thin tough scales ; these are dark dull purple on the lower side and 

 mahogany-red on the upper, their exposed portions, which are armed with stout hooked spines incurved 

 above the middle of the cone and recurved below it, being conspicuously transversely keeled, on the 

 inner side of the cone slightly thickened and on the outer, especially near the base, produced into much 

 thickened mammillate knobs ; the cones sometimes open as soon as they are ripe, and gradually shed 

 their seeds, or often remain closed for two or three years longer, and frequently do not fall from the 

 branches until the end of eighteen or twenty years. The seeds are almost triangular, full and rounded 

 on the sides, and nearly a quarter of an inch in length, with a thin conspicuous rugose light brown coat 

 and an embryo usually with six cotyledons ; their wings are thin and fragile, widest below the middle, 

 gradually narrowed to the ends, pale, lustrous, and marked with narrow red-brown streaks. 



Pinus pungens usually grows on dry gravelly slopes and ridges of the Appalachian Mountains 

 from Pennsylvania 2 to North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, sometimes ascending to elevations of 

 three thousand feet above the sea-level, with isolated outlying stations in Virginia, 3 eastern Pennsyl- 

 vania, and western New Jersey, 4 and often forms toward the southern limits of its range nearly pure 

 forests of considerable extent. 



The wood of Pinus pimgens is light, soft, not strong, brittle, and very coarse-grained. It is pale 

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

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

 absolutely dry wood is 0.4935, a cubic foot weighing 30.75 pounds. 5 It is somewhat used for fuel, and 

 in Pennsylvania is manufactured into charcoal. 



First distinguished by the French botanist Michaux, 6 Pinus pungens was introduced into English 

 gardens in 1804. 7 Although as an ornamental tree it has little to recommend it but the beauty of 

 its abundant massive cones, it is sometimes cultivated in the United States, and has proved hardy as far 

 north as eastern Massachusetts and as far west as central Kansas. 8 



1 Coulter & Rose, Bot. Gazette, xi. 307. * On May 15, 1886, R. E. Schuh and G. N. Best discovered a 



2 In Pennsylvania Pinus pungens has been observed at Two Top small grove of Pinus pungens one mile east of Sergeantsville, Dela- 

 on the east side of the Blue Mountain close to the Maryland line, ware Township, Hunterdon County, New Jersey (Bull. Torrey Bot. 

 at Fort Carbon on the Schuylkill River, and in the central part of Club, xiii. 121). 



the state, where it is abundant on the Tussey and Stone Mountain 6 Pinus pungens usually grows rapidly, although the log speci- 



ranges in Blair, Huntingdon, Centre, Mifflin, and Union Counties, men in the Jesup Collection of North American Woods in the 



and in an isolated station at McCall's Ferry, Lancaster County, American Museum of Natural History, New York, which is eleven 



where it was found in 1892 by Mr. A. A. Heller. (See Porter, and one half inches in diameter inside the bark, is seventy-four 



Garden and Forest, vi. 204.) years old. In this specimen the sapwood is two and seven eighths 



3 In Virginia where Pinus pungens is common on the Blue Ridge, inches thick, with fifty-three layers of annual growth, 

 near Charlottesville, and on the Massanutten Mountains, it was 6 See i. 58. 



found on June 17, 1794, between Alexander and Fredericksburg 7 Aiton, Hort. Kew. ed. 2, v. 314. — Loudon, Arb. Brit. iv. 2197, 



by the elder Michaux, who wrote a description of it in his Journal, f. 2077-2080. 



alluding to the fact that he had previously seen the same tree on 8 Sears, Garden and Forest, ix. 462. 



the Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania. (See Michaux, Jour, in Proc. 



Am. Phil. Soc. xxxvi. 104.) 



