EVERGREEN TREES AND SHRUBS. 531 



bottom branches creeping on the ground, but growing in favorable 

 situations, into a small tree twenty or thirty feet high, with a gray 

 and rather smoothish bark." " At great elevations on the mountains 

 it becomes merely a spreading bush creeping along the ground." 

 The largest specimens we have seen are about twelve feet high 

 and twenty feet in diameter, and are well described by the above 

 quotation. This and the mugho pines are often confounded from 

 the fact of being about equally dwarfish. The mugho has a more 

 compact form and a warmer green color. 



The Swiss Stone Pine. Finns cembra. — A tree of 

 very compact, erect, ovate-conical form, dark foliage, 

 and slow growth. On account of its formality of out- 

 line it has been much employed in gardening. Fig. 170 

 illustrates its characteristic form. It retains its lower 

 branches and foliage to a considerable age. The greatest 

 peculiarity of its foliage is the dense mass of globular 

 tufts of leaves which compose the entire surface of the 

 tree. Its rate of growth is from six inches to one foot per year, 

 and it grows to thirty or forty feet in height. 



Pyrenean Pine. Pimis pyreneaca (P. 77i07ispelliensis, P. his- 

 panica). — Leaves two in a sheath, from five to seven inches long, 

 fine, stiff, straight, thickly-set on the branches, of a clear green 

 color. Cones two and a half inches long, conical-oblong, smooth, 

 light yellow color, at right angles to the branches. " Branches 

 stout, of an orange color, numerous, regular, spreading in all direc- 

 tions around the stem, and well furnished with laterals " (Gordon). 



A large, wide-spreading tree, native of the most elevated forests 

 of the Pyrenees. 



It is extraordinary that a tree so distinct and beautiful, and 

 seemingly hardy as this, should be almost unknown in this country. 

 The largest tree of the species we have seen is growing in the 

 specimen grounds of Parsons & Co., Flushing, L. I. It is now 

 thirty feet high, and so far assumes about the same form as a very 

 spreading white pine. But its leaves are much longer than those 

 of the white, Scotch, or Austrian pines, and quite as long as those 



