122 CONIFEFLE. Picea. 



1. P. Sitchensis, Carr. A tall strictly pyramidal tree (150 to 200 feet high 

 and 6 to 9 feet in diameter), with thin scaly red-brown bark ; branchlets thick and 

 rigid, rough with the very prominent persistent leaf-bases, glabrous : leaves 5 to 8 

 lines long and a line wide or less, flattened, short-pointed (rarely obtuse or very 

 acute), stomatose (and the young leaves white) only on the upper surface or very 

 slightly so on the lower : cones cylindrical-oval, 1| to 2 or rarely 3 inches long, an 

 inch thick or less, pale yellowish, the conspicuous lanceolate rigid bracts J or \ the 

 length of the oblong rounded denticulate scales : seeds slender, 1^ to \\ lines long, 

 the wing 2 to 3 times longer (4 to 4| lines long by 1| wide), narrowly oblong, 

 only slightly oblique : cotyledons 4 to 6. Conif. 260. Pinus Sitchensis, Bong. 

 Veg. Sitch. 46. Abies, Lindl. & Gord. Pinus Menziesii, Dougl. ; Lamb. Pin. 2 eel. 

 t. 89. Abies Menziesii, Lindl. in Penny Cyc. i. 32; Loud. Arbor, iv. 2321, tig.; 

 JS T utt. Sylva, t. 116; Newberry, Pacif. R. Rep. vi. 56, t. 9. 



Peculiar to the northern Pacific coast, mostly in wet sandy soil and near the mouths of streams, 

 from Mendocino and Crescent City northward to Alaska ; how far inland or how high above the 

 ocean it may be found is at present unknown. This is probably the tallest spruce known, an 

 excellent timber-tree, probably the best in Oregon, but too rare in California to be of much im- 

 portance there. The older specific name, Sitchensis, must be substituted for the more generally 

 used Menziesii, which represents absolutely the same species. The Rocky Mountain Spruce, 

 which lias heretofore been known under the same name of Menziesii, is P. punyens, Engelm., with 

 more pungent and less flattened leaves, longer cylindrical cones, undulate retuse scales, and 

 minute bracts, and with larger broadly winged seeds. In Strawberry Valley and other valleys 

 and slopes about Mount Shasta, at an elevation of 3,500 to 4,000 feet, a peculiar spruce occurs of 

 which at present we know nothing but that its lower branches are very long, slender and pendu- 

 lous, and the leaves much narrower than those of P. Sitchensis, 7 to 9 lines long and two thirds 

 of a line wide, quite obtuse, strongly keeled and stomatose on the upper side and without sto- 

 mata beneath ; cones unknown. The name of Picea pendula suggests itself for this form, if in- 

 deed it should not prove to be a mountain variety of P. Sitchensis. 



11. PINUS, Tourn. ; Link. PINE. 



Staminate flowers an oblong or cylindrical often much elongated stamineal column 

 surrounded by a somewhat definite number (3 to 18) of calyx-like bud-scales, the 

 outer ones lateral and strongly keeled, from the axils of scales and crowded into a 

 capitate or spicate inflorescence around the base of the same spring's shoots : anther- 

 cells opening longitudinally, the connective terminating in a mere knob or short 

 dentate or usually larger semicircular erect crest : pollen-grains bilobed with 2 air- 

 sacs, smaller than in Abies and Picea (.02 to .03 line long). Female aments also 

 in the axils of bud-scales, higher up on the growing axis, either next to the ter- 

 minal bud (subterminal) or on the side with leaves and sometimes other aments 

 above them (lateral), solitary or several together ; scales much larger than the bracts. 

 Cones maturing in the second year, spreading or reflexed (very rarely erect), and 

 subterminal (so called even in case of the elongation of the axis in the second year) 

 or lateral ; bracts thickened and corky and assisting in the formation of cells for the 

 seeds under them ; scales more or less thickened and corky, upon the free exposed 

 surface (opophysis} bearing a terminal or dorsal unarmed or prickly protuberance 

 (umbo). Seeds without resin-vesicles, usually surrounded by the rim-like base of 

 the (sometimes very short) wing, which often spreads partly over the outer side of the 

 seed. Cotyledons normally 5 to 15. Trees of very various size and aspect, usually 

 not as large as in the preceding genera, nor often of the same pyramidal growth ; wood 

 soft or hard, often very resinous, of surpassing importance for man's uses : primary 

 leaves (only on seedlings and young shoots) flat, subulate and serrulate, the secondary 

 in bundles of 1 to 5, from the axils of bud-scales and surrounded at base by a more 



