Shore Pine 



27 



their basal scales attached to the persistent peduncle. Seed obovate, rounded, 

 about 6 mm. long, light brown and mottled; wing about 15 mm. long, broadest 

 at the apex, obhque and easily detached from the seed. 



The wood is hard, brittle, coarse-grained and resinous, light brown; its specific 

 gravity is about 0.46. 



It is also called Long-leaved pine. Bull pine. Yellow pine, Foothills pine, and 

 Rocky Mountain yellow^ pine, and is perhaps better regarded as an eastern form 

 of the preceding species. 



19. SHORE PINE Pinus contorta Loudon 



The Shore pine occurs chiefly along the coast from Alaska to Mendocino county, 

 California, at the north in Sphagnum bogs, southward on sand dunes and in other 

 barren places. Its maximum height is 24 meters, with a trunk diameter of 1.5 m.; 

 usually, however, it is scarcely 7.5 m. tall with a trunk diameter of 4.5 dm., and 

 is often reduced to a shrub bearing cones when only a few dm. high. 



The trunk is short, its branches rather stout, forming a compact round-topped 

 head, sometimes grotesquely irregular. The 

 bark is 2 cm. thick, irregularly and deeply 

 fissured in both directions into small, oblong 

 plates, thickly covered with close dark red- 

 dish brown scales of a purplish or sometimes 

 orange tinge ; on younger stems it is thinner, 

 smoother, and of various shades of red or 

 brown. The twigs are stout, smooth and 

 yellowish, gradually darkening through red- 

 brown to nearly black, and roughened by 

 the persistent bases of the bud-scales; 

 branch-buds ovoid, sharp-pointed, often 12 

 mm. long and dark brown. The leaves arc 

 in loose-sheathed fascicles of 2, dark green, 

 2.5 to 5 cm. long, slender, minutely sharp- 

 toothed and with short thick tips; they 

 are marked by 6 to 10 rows of deep stomata 

 on each face and contain 2 resin-ducts 

 ^|nd 2 tibrovascular bundles; they persist for about six years. The staminate 

 blowers are short, crowded spike-like, oblong or broadly cylindric, 12 mm. long; 

 "their anthers are orange. The pistillate flowers are in terminal or subterminal 

 clusters or pairs, erect to nearly horizontal, on stout, scaly stalks, subcylindric, 

 about 5 mm. long, their scales long-tipped, orange-red. The young cones are erect 

 or spreading, oval, 12 to 18 mm. long and light red-brown; at maturity, the next 

 autumn, they are sohtary or in clusters, oval or subcylindric, 2 to 5 cm. long, 

 very oblicjue at the base, light yellowish brown and shining, usually opening and 



Fig. 20. Shore Pine. 



