ADDITIONAL NOTES ON LOBLOLLY PINE. 



By FILIBBRT ROTH. 

 (September 1, 1897.) 



Where Loblolly is the great timber tree of the woods, and often by itself covers many miles of 

 land, in the northeast part of North Carolina, this tree is universally known as "Shortleaf Piue." 

 Many people employ special names for young growth or saplings of unusual development, espe- 

 cially where the connection between the mature tree and the sapling is not quite clear to them. 

 In Florida the tree is often little known, and is usually grouped with Pond Pine as "Loblolly." In 

 Texas the name "Bastard" pine is frequently employed, implying a belief that this is a hybrid 

 between the Longleaf and Shortleaf pines. 



In the large forests of North Carolina, east of the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad, where 

 this tree seems at its best, and where it furnishes 80 to 85 per cent of the North Carolina pine of the 

 market, it is always a fast grower and a heavy bearer. At its southern limits in the peninsula of 

 Florida the species occurs only in hammock lands and similar sites, where it nevertheless still 

 makes large trees. 



Saplings 10 to 15 feet high along the edges of clearings are often laden with cones and rapidly 

 seed the open ground for many rods about. In this old-settled region, where the danger from 

 fire is limited, dense groves of saplings are met on every hand and millions of feet of lumber are 

 to-day cut from land where the corn rows are still apparent. It is probably fair to say that the 

 average lumber-size tree of this region is not over one hundred and twenty-five years old, and 

 thousands of them are less than eighty years. Numerous tracts are now cut for the second time 

 in thirty years, a fact which has misled many men to enunciate the absurd statement that this 

 pine required only fifteen to thirty years to grow to merchantable size. Generally the logging is 

 not clean, and in most cases a fine lot of pole trees is left 8 to 12 inches in diameter, requiring 

 only a further increase of 4 to 8 inches to become of lumber size. 



In the North Carolina district (including southeast Virginia) this pine is distinctly a "sap 

 pine," more than 70 per cent of the wood being sapwood. In logging the stem is cut into standard 

 sizes, the top is entirely rejected, and the logs are rafted or else hauled to the mill by railway. It is 

 usually sawn with band saws, almost exclusively into boards li inches or less, and at once dried 

 in dry kilns at temperatures of 160 to 180 F. Equipment and method as well as the product 

 turned out by the larger establishments of this district are unexcelled in the manufacture of 

 lumber in this country. 



Close to the principal markets, on cheap land, and stocked with the fastest-growing and best 

 reproducing pine in this country, these forests have a very bright future. With a reasonable 

 amount of care, well-paying pine forests, yielding 30,000 to 50,000 feet of good pine per acre in 



one hundred years may be established here. 



133 



