CONIFERS. 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



153 



southern foothills of the Appalachian Mountains to an altitude of two thousand feet above the level 

 of the sea ; * west of the Mississippi River it ranges to the valley of the Trinity River, and from the 

 neighborhood of the coast to the thirty-second degree of north latitude in Texas, and in western 

 Louisiana nearly to the northern borders of the state. 2 



The most valuable of the Pitch Pines and one of the most important timber-trees of North 

 America, Pinus palustris produces heavy, exceedingly hard very strong tough coarse-grained durable 

 wood ; it is light red or orange-color, with thin nearly white sapwood, and contains broad bands of 

 small resinous summer cells occupying about half the width of the annual growth, few inconspicuous 

 resin passages, and many conspicuous medullary rays. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood 

 is 0.6999, a cubic foot weighing 43.62 pounds. 3 It is largely used for masts and spars, and in the 



ing White Cedars, Bays, "Water Oaks, Live Oaks, Magnolias, and 

 Gum-trees. On slightly higher and better drained levels the Long- 

 leaved Pine was once more abundant, but it has now almost entirely 

 disappeared from all parts of the coast plain and has been replaced 

 by Pinus Tceda and Pinus heterophylla. 



(2.) The rolling Pine hills or upland Pine barrens rising in the 

 Atlantic states some six hundred feet above the sea-level, and 

 spreading in the Gulf states into broad undulating lower table- 

 lands. These hills and table-lands were once covered exclusively 

 by forests of the Long-leaved Pine, extending without interruption 

 over hundreds of square miles in gloomy monotony. 



(3.) The upper division or region of mixed growth. In this 

 interior region, where the Long-leaved Pine grows to its largest 

 dimensions with the largest proportion of trees of maximum size, 

 it is confined to ridges covered by drifted sands and pebbles, to 

 rocky heights, alternating with open Oak woods growing on cal- 

 careous loams and marls, and to areas on which the drifts have 

 mixed with these loams and marls, where it mingles with deciduous- 

 leaved trees and with the Loblolly and Short-leaved Pines. (See 

 Mohr, Bull. No. 13, Div. Forestry U. S. Dept. Agric. 30 [The Timber 

 Pines of the Southern U. £.].) 



1 On Blue Mountain or Talladega Mountain Range in Talladega 

 County, Alabama, Pinus palustris flourishes up to an elevation of 

 two thousand feet above the sea, although in this part of the state 

 it usually disappears at from three to five hundred feet lower 

 (Mohr, I. v. 73). 



2 West of the Mississippi River the forests of Pinus palustris 

 are also confined to the sands and gravels of the latest tertiary 

 formations, occupying in Louisiana two distinct regions ; in one, 

 south of Red River, it extends from the borders of the treeless 

 savannas of the coast to the bottoms of Red River, and from the 

 eastern boundary of Calcasieu Parish to the Sabine River, which it 

 crosses into Texas ; in the other, north of Red River, it extends 

 nearly to Arkansas, and from the uplands bordering the bottoms of 

 the Ouachita westward along the shores of Lake Catahoula until it 

 is stopped again by the alluvial deposits of Red River. The Pine 

 flats near the Louisiana coast, which are imperfectly drained and 

 often covered with water, produce an open forest of comparatively 

 small trees, which have already been cut and, owing to the un- 

 fa vorable nature of the soil, are not replacing themselves. Farther 

 from the coast in all the region south of Red River, on low ridges 

 the Long-leaved Pine, crowded in dense forests, grows to a great 

 height and produces timber of excellent quality. The undulating 

 uplands immediately north of the Red River bottoms are still 

 covered with pure nearly unbroken forests of this tree ; farther 

 north Pine-covered ridges rise between flats clothed with White 

 Oaks and Hickories, and still farther north the forests are more 

 open and the Long-leaved Pines, which grow here in great perfec- 



tion, are mixed with the Short-leaved Pine and with deciduous- 

 leaved trees. 



In Texas, as in Louisiana, the imperfectly drained coast flats 

 have been stripped of their Pine forests, but farther inland, on 

 gentle undulating low hills, this tree grows rapidly to a large size, 

 producing timber equaling that produced in the adjacent pineries 

 of southwestern Louisiana. (See Mohr, I. c. 44.) 



3 During their early years the seedlings of Pinus palustris devote 

 most of their energies to the development of the powerful root sys- 

 tem peculiar to this tree, the stem at the end of the first year being 

 rarely over three quarters of an inch in length, although the tap- 

 root at this time is often from eight to ten inches long. At the 

 end of another year the tap-root is often from two to three feet 

 long, while the stem is scarcely an inch and a half high ; and at the 

 end of the fourth year the average plant is not more than five 

 inches in height, while the tap-root has constantly gained in thick- 

 ness and length. In its seventh year the plant enters a period of 

 vigorous growth, the stem increasing rapidly in length and produ- 

 cing branches in regular whorls, its upward growth during several 

 seasons varying at this period from ten to twenty inches. Trees 

 grown on abandoned farms, and from thirty to thirty-five years of 

 age, have a height of from forty-five to fifty feet and a trunk 

 diameter of ten and a, half or eleven inches, their leading shoots 

 being sometimes two feet in length, while trees of the same age 

 grown in the forest on land which has never been cleared require 

 almost twice as long to attain the same size. When twenty years 

 of age the trees begin to produce flowers and fruit, and during the 

 following ten or fifteen years attain an average height of from 

 forty to forty-five feet, with clear stems free of branches for a 

 considerable distance above the ground. Growing upward rapidly 

 with an average yearly increase of fourteen or fifteen inches dur- 

 ing its first half century, the average upward growth during the 

 next fifty years is not more than four or five inches, and between 

 the ages of one hundred and two hundred and fifty years the usual 

 increase is only about an inch and a, half, the decrease in the ac- 

 cretion of wood corresponding with the production of the upward 

 growth of the stem and branches. After they have reached the 

 age of two hundred years the trees generally become wind-shaken 

 and defective, while the exhaustion of the soil lessens their vitality 

 and increases their danger from disease and the attacks of insects, 

 and trees over two hundred and seventy-five years old are excep- 

 tional. (See Mohr, I. c. 55, for an elaborate account of the rate 

 of growth of Pinus palustris in different parts of the country, and 

 for a discussion of the conditions essential to its best development. 

 See, also, Mlodziansky, Garden and Forest, ix. 72.) 



The log specimen in the Jesup Collection of North American 

 Woods in the American Museum of Natural History, New York, 

 cut in southern Georgia, is seventeen inches and three quarters in 



