THE HARD PINES OF THE NORTHEAST 



BY JOSEPH S. ILLICK 



fT^ HE pines are the best-known timber trees of the 

 * United States. To determine why they are so well 

 known is not difficult. They are among our commonest 

 forest trees, and have come in contact with the average 

 man in so many different ways that the word "pine" is 

 really a common household word. 



Ever since the early pioneers arrived pine wood has 

 held a prominent place in every walk of life. It would 



RED PINE GROWING IN THE OPEN 

 The needles occur in tufts or clusters at the branches. 



be difficult to name a single line of development in which 

 it has not taken part. ]Much of our national prosperity 

 and personal comfort may be traced back to the glorious 

 pine trees that originally covered extensive areas of land 

 in all parts of our country. 



There is another reason why "pine" is a real househlod 

 word. It is because the pine trees are so common. They 

 occur in every part of the country and grow upon a wide 

 range of situations. They are at their best in temperate 

 regions, where they can be found from sea level to the 

 timberline, an altitudinal range of about 11,500 feet. 

 Some of them venture into the sub-tropics, and a few 

 brave the cold of the far North, where they have pushed 

 forward to places within the Arctic Circle; and in this 



wide range they occur on all conditions of soil from deep 

 swamps to dry and rocky mountain tops. 



And there is a third reason why the pines as a group 

 are so well known. Few people know that there are 

 seventy different kinds of them in the world, and that 

 thirty-five are native to North America. This means 

 that there are as many different kinds of pine trees native 

 to North America as occur in the rest of the world. Only 

 a few other groups of trees have so many representatives 

 of economic importance. It may be helpful to tell what 

 is meant by the term "hard pines." In the early days, 

 names could not be coined for the different pines as rap- 

 idly as the trees were discovered, so a practical grouping 

 of them took place. Two groups were made, namely, 

 soft pines and hard pines. The soft pines include all 

 the species which produce soft wood; while the hard 

 pines embrace those species which produce relatively 

 hard wood. 



A THRIFTY PLANTATION OF YOUNG JACK PINE 

 This is on the Jacob Nolde estate near Reading, Pennsylvania 



