298. PlNUS PUNGENS TABLE-MOUNTAIN PlNE. 4# 



GYMNOSPERM^E. 



Flowering, exogenous plants with leaves chiefly parallel-veined and cotyledons 

 frequently more than two. Flowers diclinous and very incomplete; pistil repre- 

 sented by an open scale or leaf, or altogether wanting, with ovules naked, fertilized 

 by direct contact with the pollen, and seeds at maturity naked without a true 

 pericarp. 



ORDER CONIFER7E: PINE FAMILY. 



Lrares narrow or scale-like, clustered or alternate, parallel-veined and generally 

 persistent; buds scaly. Flowers in catkins or solitary with an involucre of 

 enlarged bud-scales, unsexual and monoecious (dioecious in Juniperus) destitute of 

 calyx and corolla; anthers 2-celled; pistillate flowers bearing on the inner face 

 of each scale 2 or more ovules and becoming in Fruit a woody cone or rarely a 

 berry or drupe; seeds often winged, with coat of two layers; embryo axile in 

 copious albumen; cotyledons 2 or several. 



A family of trees and few r shrubs with resinous juice and cell-walls of wood 

 marked with circular discs. It is of greatest economic value and world-wide 

 distribution, but chiefly in north temperate regions. Among its representatives 

 are trees, notably the Sequoias, which are considered to be of the greatest long- 

 evity of all living organisms. It consists of thirty-one genera of which thirteen 

 are represented in the United States. 



GENUS PIXUS, L. 



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

 (solitary in one species), from the axils of scale-like primary leaves 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 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. 



The Pines are trees and a few shrubs of the northern hemisphere and chiefly 

 of temperate regions. Many of its representatives are of greatest economic value. 

 Abouc eighty species are recognized of which thirty-four are natives of the United 

 States. (The name is a Latin wor.d from Celtic pin or pen, a crag.) 



298. PINUS PUNGENS, MICHX. 

 TABLE-MOUNTAIN PINE. 



Ger., Tafelberg Fichte; Fr., Pin de plateau; Sp., Pino de mesa. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS: Leaves in crowded clusters of 2, 2-4 in. long with short 

 persistent sheaths, stout, stiff, more or less twisted, with 2 fibre-vascular bundles 

 and resin-ducts in parenchyma; branchlets short, dark brown and rough. Flowers 

 staminate yellow, in loose clusters; the pistillate long-stalked, lateral and generally 

 in whorls of 2 to 5 or more. Cones short-ovoid, 3-4 in. long, lateral and in whorls 

 upon the branchlct, oblique at base, sessile and with scales, especially those of the 



