144 8ILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. conifers. 



young trees of four, with sheaths which at first are half an inch long, thin, silvery white, and lustrous, 

 and before autumn are close and firm except on the scarious margins, dark gray-brown, and about a 

 quarter of an inch in length ; the leaves are closely serrulate, acute with short callous tips, soft and 

 flexible, dark blue-green, from three to five inches long and about one sixteenth of an inch wide ; they 

 contain two fibro-vascular bundles, from three to six small resin ducts, a single layer of strengthening 

 cells under the epidermis, and numerous bands of stomata on each face ; * they sometimes begin to fall 

 toward the close of their second season, and, dropping irregularly, often do not entirely disappear until 

 their fifth year. The staminate flowers, which are produced in short crowded clusters, appear in very 

 early spring just below the tip of the growing shoots, and are oblong-cylindrical and about three 

 quarters of an inch in length and an eighth of an inch in thickness, with pale purple anthers 

 terminating in orbicular obscurely denticulate crests, and are surrounded by from eight to ten involucral 

 bracts, those of the outer rank being much smaller than the others and conspicuously keeled. The 

 pistillate flowers, which are usually in pairs or in clusters of three or four and often appear on short 

 lateral branchlets developed from adventitious buds on old branches, 2 are subterminal and raised on 

 stout ascending peduncles covered by ovate-lanceolate dark chestnut-brown bracts, much spreading or 

 reflexed in the inner ranks, and are oblong or subglobose and about one third of an inch in length, 

 with ovate pale rose-colored scales gradually narrowed into short slender tips and large nearly orbicular 

 bracts. Growing slowly at first, the cones during their first winter are horizontal or ascending, oblong, 

 light chestnut-brown, and about half an inch long, with thickened scales terminating in slender rigid 

 straight or recurved spines, and when fully grown early in the following autumn they are ovate or 

 oblong-conical, subsessile and nearly horizontal, or short-stalked and pendent, generally clustered and 

 usually about an inch and a half or rarely two inches and a half in length, with thin scales nearly flat 

 below and rounded at the apex, their exposed portions, which are transversely keeled and only slightly 

 thickened, terminating in small pale elevated oblong umbos armed with short straight or somewhat 

 recurved and frequently deciduous prickles ; the cones, which are produced in great profusion, often on 

 trees only twelve or fifteen years old, open when ripe, turning dull brown, the bases of the scales 

 becoming mahogany-red and lustrous on the upper and dark dull purple on the lower side, and, soon 

 shedding their seeds, remain on the branches for several years longer. The seeds are nearly triangular, 

 full and rounded on the sides, slightly ridged, and about three sixteenths of an inch long, with a thin 

 pale brown hard coat conspicuously mottled with black ; their wings, which are broadest near the 

 middle, are thin, fragile, light red-brown, lustrous, half an inch long, and about an eighth of an inch 

 wide. 



JPinus echinata is distributed from Staten Island, New York, 3 and eastern Pennsylvania 4 through 

 New Jersey and Delaware, southward through the Atlantic states to the uplands of northern Florida, 

 crossing the Alleghany Mountains to "West Virginia and to eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, and 

 through the eastern Gulf states to the bottom-lands of the Mississippi River ; west of the Mississippi 

 River, where it is most abundant and attains its noblest size, often forming pure forests over great 

 areas, it ranges from northeastern Texas, northwestern Louisiana, and the eastern part of the Indian 

 Territory, through western and central Arkansas and southern Missouri to southwestern Illinois, 5 and 

 through Kentucky and Tennessee. Although found in nearly all parts of the state of New Jersey, 

 Pinus echinata is rare north of the southeastern boundary of the red sandstone except on the western 



1 Coulter & Kose, Bot. Gazette, xi. 308. — Bastin & Trimble, of Albany. (See Hist. Arb. i. 52.) If these statements are cor- 

 Am. Jour. Pharm. lxviii. 17. rect, it must have been exterminated in this territory, as the most 



2 See Mobr, Bull. No. 13, Div. Forestry U. S. Dept. Agric. 97 eastern station in which it is now known to occur is on Staten 

 (The Timber Pines of the Southern U. S.). Island, where a small grove of these trees exists. 



3 According to the younger Michaux, who carefully explored the * In Pennsylvania Pinus echinata is extremely rare, and has been 

 forests of eastern North America at the beginning of the present reported only from Huntingdon and Lancaster Counties. (See 

 century, Pinus echinata in his time occurred in Massachusetts and Rothrock, Rep. Penn. Dept. Agric. 1895, pt. ii. Div. Forestry, 280.) 

 Connecticut, and ascended the Hudson River to the neighborhood 6 Ridgway, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus. v. 88 ; Bot. Gazette, viii. 351. 



