Evergreens. (A walk) 63 



this is to give an old tree an umbrella-like shape which 

 is quite different from what it was in its younger days. 

 A young Scotch pine is very regular in its growth. 

 Each year it adds a new circle of branches to its trunk 

 and one to each of the side branches. Thus, until it 

 begins to cast its lower branches, you can tell the age 

 of one of these trees by counting the number of circles, 

 or whorls as they are called, of branches growing out 

 from the trunk, and adding on one for the first year 

 before the seedling formed side branches. The ac- 

 companying diagrams will make my meaning clearer 

 (Fig. 35). For the sake of clearness I have only drawn 

 two of the branches in each whorl. Even so the later 

 diagrams become very much complicated with all the 

 branching and rebranching. The spruce fir shows this 

 same regularity of shape, and so do several of the other 

 pines, hence you can tell their age in the same way. 



The spruce fir (familiar to you as a Christmas tree) 

 is the evergreen that stands next in importance to the 

 Scotch pine. Although these two trees are rather similar 

 in shape when they are young, the spruce does not tend 

 to lose its pointed shape as it grows old. Its leaves are 

 much shorter than those of the Scotch pine and are 

 arranged singly along the twigs instead of in pairs. 



The Pine family contains other members, as the 

 stone pine, the Weymouth pine, and the silver fir 

 (also one non-evergreen tree the larch). Although 

 these trees differ from each other in details of form 

 or leaf, they all show the same general adaptation to 

 their environment of which I spoke at the beginning 

 of the lesson. 



The timber of these trees is known as 'deal' and, 

 especially in the case of that of the Scotch pine, is very 



