352 PINUS PALUSTKIS. 



Pinus palustris. 



A tall tree with a trunk 50 100 or more feet high and 1-5 3 feet 

 in diameter near the ground, covered with reddish brown bark fissured 

 into oblong plates, and "with a massive tap-root penetrating deep into 

 the ground and thick lateral roots spreading widely near the surface." 

 Branches thick, spreading horizontally, sometimes attaining a length of 

 20 feet, but generally less even when the trees are not crowded, often 

 gnarled or curved, and imparting to the tree an unsymmetrical habit. 

 Branchlets stoutish, prominently marked with short-keeled, cortical 

 outgrowths spirally arranged around them. Buds sub-conic, acute, 

 1 -5 2 inches long ; the perulae lanceolate, acuminate, with ciliate 

 margins, and reflexed at the apex. Leaves ternate, sometimes pseudo- 

 geminate by the cohesion of two, persistent two three years, 7 10 

 inches long, triquetrous, mucronate, with minutely serrulate margins, 

 bright grass-green; basal sheath 1 1'25 inch long, much shortened 

 and lacerated the second year. Staminate flowers densely clustered, 

 cylindric, incurved, 1'5 2 inches long, rose-purple. Cones ovoid-cylindric 

 or cylindric-conic, 6 9 inches long and 2 3 inches in diameter near 

 the base ; scales oblong, 2 inches long, reddish brown, the apophysis 

 rhomboidal with a transverse keel and low pyramidal umbo in the 

 centre terminating in a sharp prickle. Seeds oval, with a narrow 

 elongated wing nearly as long as the scale. 



Pinus palustris, Miller, Diet. ed. VIII. No. 14 (1768). Lambert, Genus Pinus, I. 

 t. 20 (1803). Forbes, Pinet. Woburn, 59, t. 22. Link in Linnsea, XV. 507. Mohr 

 in Garden and Forest, I. 261. Masters in Journ. R. Hort. Soc XIV. 236. Sargent, 

 Silva N. Amer. XL 151. tt. 589, 590. 



P. australis, Michaux, Hist. Arb. Airier. I. 64, t. 6 (1810). London, Arb. et Frut. 

 Brit. IV. 2255, with figs. Endlicher, Synops. Conif. 165. Carriere, Traite Conif. 

 ed II. 450 Parlatore, D. C. Prodr. XVI. 392. Gordon. Pinet, ed. II. 260. 



Eng. and Amer. Long-leaved Pine, Southern Pitch Pine. 



Pinus palustris is almost the sole ingredient of the immense forests 

 stretching uninterruptedly along the Atlantic seaboard from south-east 

 Virginia to the Everglades in Florida, and also along the northern 

 littoral of the Gulf of Mexico as far as Trinity Valley in south 

 Texas. This belt, known in the United States as the southern 

 " Pine Barrens," varies from 80 to 125 miles in breadth in the 

 Atlantic States, but is much narrower " along the Gulf coast ; it is 

 estimated to have once covered upwards of 130,000 square miles, an 

 area greater than that of Great Britain and Ireland, and to have 

 represented an amount of wealth which if properly husbanded would 

 have made the States of South Carolina and Georgia among the 

 richest in the Union. But "invaded from every direction by the 

 axe, a prey to fires which weaken the mature trees and destroy 

 the tender saplings, wasted by the pasturage of domestic animals, 

 and destroyed for the doubtful profits of the turpentine industry, 

 the forests of Long-leaved Pines appear hopelessly doomed to lose 

 their commercial importance at no distant day." : 



* Silva of North America, XL 156. 



