THE PITCH PINE. 423 



mutilated to a considerable extent without losing its nor- 

 mal characters of beauty. 



In young trees of this species the whorls of branches 

 may be plainly distinguished ; but as the tree increases in 

 size, so many members of the whorl become abortive that 

 all regularity of staging in their arrangement is destroyed. 

 As these branches are numerous, with but little space 

 between the original whorls, they seem to project from 

 every part of the trunk. This tree displays very little 

 primness in its shape, or of a spiry form, save when it 

 is a very young tree. A peculiar habit of the Pitch 

 Pine is that of producing little branchlets full of leaves 

 along the stem from the root upwards, completely en- 

 veloping some of the principal boughs. These are rarely 

 anything more than tufts of leaves standing out as if 

 they had been grafted into the bark of the tree. It seems 

 to be stimulated to produce this anomalous growth by 

 the loss of its small branches. It then soon covers itself 

 with this embroidery, and thus garlanded presents a pic- 

 turesque appearance more interesting than that of the 

 perfect trees. 



I have seen very beautiful Pitch Pine trees of an ab- 

 normal shape, caused by the loss, when young, of the lead- 

 ing shoot. The lateral branches next below this terminal 

 bud, being thus converted into leaders, produce two and 

 sometimes three leading branches, giving the tree some 

 of the characters of the deciduous species. The white 

 pine is not improved by a similar accident, as it loses 

 thereby the expression of grandeur that comes from the 

 length and size of its lateral branches, which are always 

 diminished by coming from two or more leading shafts. 

 Michaux remarks that when Pitch Pines "grow in masses, 

 the cones are dispersed singly over the branches, and they 

 shed their seeds the first autumn after they mature. But 

 on solitary trees the cones are collected in groups of four 



