PINUS AYACAHUITE. 311 



Pinus Ayacahuite. 



A lofty tree, attaining a height of 100 feet on the mountains of 

 Oaxaca with a trunk 3 4 feet in diameter, and much resembling 

 Pinus Strobus in. habit and aspect. In Great Britain the young trees 

 are not unlike P. excelsa, the primary branches spreading and more or 

 less upturned at the extremity. Branchlet's with pale orange-brown 

 bark, the herbaceous shoots devoid of leaves at the base and covered 

 with a ferrugiiieous pubescence which soon disappears. Buds conic, 

 acute, chestnut-brown with narrowly lanceolate, acuminate perulse which 

 are afterwards reflexecl and fall off. Leaves quinate, persistent about 

 three years, filiform with scaberulous margins, 3 '5 6 inches long, 

 bright green on the convex side, with three five silver-grey 

 stomatiferous lines on the flat sides ; basal sheath about an inch long, 

 deciduous. Staminate flowers not seen. Cones solitary or in clusters 

 of twos and threes, sub-cylindric, gradually tapering to an obtuse point, 

 9 12 inches long. Scales elliptic-oblong, 2 inches long and 1 

 inch broad with a reflexed thickened tip, the exposed apical part 

 strongly striated longitudinally. Seeds ovoid, compressed, about 0*5 

 inch long, furnished with a pale testaceous obliquely truncate wing 

 about an inch long.* 



Pinus Ayacahuite. Ehrenberg ex Schlechtendal in Liimtea, XII. 492 (1838). 

 Endlicher, Synops. Conif. 149 (1847). Carriere, Traite Conif. ed. II. 402. 

 Parlatore, D. C. Prodr. XVI. 406. Gordon, Pinet. ed. II. 292. Masters in Gard. 

 Chron. XVIII. (1882), p. 492, with fig. ; and Journ. R. Hort. Soc. XIV. 225. 

 Lawson, Pinet. Brit. L. 9, t. 2. 



P. Loudoniana, Gordon, Pinet. ed. II. 311. 



P. Don Pedri, and others, Roezl. 



Mexican vernacular, Ayacahuite. 



Pinus Ayacahuite is the common White Pine of Mexico ; it is 

 spread over the country from Oaxaca northwards to, and probably 

 beyond the United States frontier line, and southwards into 

 Guatemala, always at a considerable elevation. On the high 

 mountain slopes of northern Mexico it forms in places extensive 

 forests, and supplies the most useful timber of the region. It was 

 first detected by Ehrenberg, in 1836, in southern Mexico, and three 

 years later by Hartweg on the mountains of Santa Maria near the 

 town of Quezaltemango in Guatemala, where he obtained a supply 

 of ripe cones which he forwarded to the Horticultural Society of 

 London. Plants raised from the seeds of these cones were subsequently 

 distributed among the Fellows of the Society, f 



Pinus Ayacahuite has been a denizen of this country for more than half 

 a century, and although the plants originally distributed by the 

 Horticultural Society of London have been decimated by the recurrence 

 of exceptionally severe winters, cone-bearing trees presumably of 

 Hartwegian origin are still standing in the Pinetum at Bictoii ; at 

 St. Austell in Cornwall ; at Westonbirt in Gloucestershire ; in the 

 nursery of Messrs. Paul and Son at Cheshunt, and probably in other 



* Materials for description communicated by Captain Holford from Westonbirt, 

 Gloucestershire. 



f Transactions of Horticultural Society of London, vol. III. ser. II. p. 136. 



