48 HOUGH'S AMERICAN WOODS. 



with thin whitish sap-wood and of a strong characteristic and somewhat 

 terebinthinate odor. Specific Gravity, 0.5145; Percentage of Ash, 0.73; 

 Relative Approximate Fuel Va lue, 0.5107; Coefficient of Elasticity, 82833; 

 Modulus of Rupture, 887; Resistance to Longitudinal Pressure, 460; Re- 

 sistance to Indentation, 158; Weight of a Cubic Foot in Pounds, 32.06. 



USES. Very valuable for fences, etc., owing to its great lasting quali- 

 ties, and for which most of the best trees in the vicinity of Chatta- 

 hoochee have been cut down. 



MEDICINAL PBOPERTIES are not known of this tree. 



GENUS PINUS, TOUKNEFORT. 



Leaves evergreen, needle-shaped, from slender buds, in clusters of 2-5 together, 

 each cluster invested at its base with a sheath of thin, membranous scales. Flowers 

 appearing in spring, monoecious. Sterile flowers in catkins, clustered at the base of 

 the shoots of the season; stamens numerous with very short filaments and a scale-like 

 connective; anther-cells, 2, opening lengthwise; pollen grains triple. Fertile flowers 

 in conical or cylindrical spikes cones consisting of imbricated, carpellary scales, 

 each in the axil of a persistent bract and bearing at its base within a pair of inverted 

 ovules, Fruit maturing in the autumn of the second year, a cone formed of the 

 imbricated carpellary scales, which are woody, often thickened or awned at the apex, 

 persistent, when ripe dry and spreading to liberate the two nut-like and usually 

 winged seeds; cotyledons 3-12 linear. 



(Pinus is a Latin word from Celtic pin or pen, a crag.} 



121. PINUS SEROTINA, MICHX. 

 POND PINE. 



Ger., Teicli-Fichte ; Fr., Pin d*Etang ; Sp., Pino pantanoso. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. Leaves three together, 5-8 in. in length, somewhat 

 crowded, from a dark sheath about ^ in. in length. Fruit very short-pedunculate or 

 often sessile, lateral, ovoid-pyramidal cones, when closed, '2-3 in* in length (about as 

 broad as long when expanded), brown or grayish, often in pairs or clusters, scales 

 rounded and thickened at the extremity and furnished with a very small, weak 

 prickle. 



(The specific name, serotina is a Latin adjective meaning late or backward, and 

 refers to the lateness of the tree in shedding its cones.) 



A tree occasionally attaining the height of 80 ft. (24 m.) and 30 in. 

 (0.90 m.) in diameter of trunk as its maximum dimensions. It is a tree 

 with wide-spreading, lofty top. with remote, rough, scaly branches, bear- 

 ing close along their sides many scattering or clustered cones which re- 

 main on the tree, and some even retain their seeds, for six or seven years 

 or more after attaining maturity. The bark of trunk is of a grayish- 

 brown color, checking with age into very wide irregular ridges or patches 

 composed of many loose irregular friable scales. 



HABITAT. A rather uncommon tree found along the coast from 

 North Carolina southward to about the latitude of Tampa, Florida, 

 growing in moist soil along the borders of streams, swamps and ponds of 

 the pine region. 



