PIN US M URIC AT A. 351 



long ; shorter, darker and lacerated the second year. Staminate flowers 

 in an elongated spike, 3 4 inches long, oval, about O5 inch long, 

 pale yellow; iiivolucral bracts six eight, linear-lanceolate, chestnut-brown. 

 Cones in whorls of five six or more at the base of the current 

 year's shoots and persisting many years, obliquely and broadly ovoid, 

 obtuse, 3 3 '5 inches long and about 1/5 inch broad above the base,, 

 composed of very hard, enduring, closely adherent scales of which the 

 exposed swollen apex is of rhomboidal shape with a transverse keel 

 enlarged at the centre into a strong sharp prickle. 



Pinus muricata, Don in Trans. Linn. Soc. XVIII. 441 (1836). Lambert, Genus- 

 Finns, ed. III. t. 84. London, Arb. et Frtit. Brit. IV 7 . 2269, with tig. Carriere, Traite 

 Conif. ed. II. 443. Parlatore, D. C. Prodr. XVI. 379. Gordon, Pinet. ed. II. 

 246. Masters in Gard. Chron. XXI. (1884), p. 49, with figs. ; and Jonrn. R, 

 Hurt. Soc. XIV. 235. Beissner, Nadelholzk. 213. Sargent, Garden and Forest, 

 X. 232,' with fig. ; and Silva N. Amer. XI. 139, tt. 585,' 586. 



P. Edgariana, Hartweg in Jouin Hort. Soc. Lond. III. 217, 226 (1848). 



Eng. Bishop's Pine.* Amer. Prickle-coned Pine, Obispo Pine. Germ, Bischofs 

 Kiefer. 



Pinus muricata is a maritime Pine found wild only in the vicinity 

 of the Californian coast exposed to the fogs and winds from the 

 Pacific Ocean. From Mendocino its northern limit and where it 

 attains its largest size, it spreads southwards with numerous 

 interruptions to San Luis Obispo and thence into Lower California 

 where it finds its southern limit. South of Monterey it occurs only 

 in clumps or copses on the parched and sandy coast of the region^ 

 It was first described by Don in the " Transactions of the Linnean 

 Society" from specimens gathered by Coulter in the neighbourhood of 

 Monterey in 1832 ; it was introduced by the Horticultural Society 

 of London in 1846 through Hartweg who named it P. Edgariana in 

 compliment to Mr. Thomas Edgar, the Treasurer of the Society 

 on the assumption that the species was new to science and 

 horticulture. 



Not much can be said of Pinus muricata as a tree for the parks 

 and landscapes of Great Britain. The oldest specimens are medium- 

 sized or low trees with flattened tops and straggling curved or crooked 

 branches but sparsely ramified and with the foliage clustered at the 

 extremities of the branchlets. A peculiarity of P muricata but which 

 it possesses in common with P. punyens, P. Pinaster and a few 

 others is the persistency of its hard prickly cones which remain on 

 the tree for an indefinite time or so long as the branch remains 

 uninjured, without shedding their seeds; twenty-four clusters of 

 cones have been counted along a single branch of one of the 

 oldest trees in England, and as many as thirty such clusters have been 

 observed on trees in California. The wood is resinous, light and coarse- 

 grained, and of little use except for fuel, except near its northern 

 limit when it is occasionally used for out-of-door carpentry. The 

 specific name, from murex, a sharp point or prickle, refers to the 

 sharp spines with which the cones are armed. 



* An inappropriate name, a corruption of Obispo Pine and not connected with any 

 ecclesiastical dignitary. 



