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AMERICAN FOREST TREES 



ling is usually more than half dark colored summerwood. The Cuban 

 pine grows rapidly, quickly appropriates vacant ground, and the species 

 is spreading. Its needles, from eight to twelve inches long, fall the sec- 

 ond year. The wood possesses nearly the strength, hardness, and stiffness 

 of longleaf pine, and the trunks are as large. The two woods which are so 

 similar in other respects differ in figure, owing to the wider annual rings 

 of the Cuban pine. The sapwood of the latter species greatly exceeds in 

 thickness that of longleaf pine. For that reason it is often mistaken for 

 loblolly pine. Cuban pine never goes to market under its own name, 

 but is mixed with and passes for one of the other southern yellow pines. 

 SAND PINE (Pinus dausa). This tree is generally twenty or thirty 

 feet high, and eight or twelve inches in diameter. Under favorable con- 

 ditions it attains a height of sixty or eighty feet and a diameter of two. 

 The leaves are two or three inches long, and fall the third and fourth 

 years. Its range is almost wholly in Florida but extends a little over the 

 northern border. It grows as far south as Tampa on the west coast, and 

 nearly to Miami on the east. It is not much cut for lumber because of 

 its small size and generally short, limby trunk. In a few localities 

 shapely boles are developed, and serviceable lumber is made. It is a 

 poor-land tree, as its name implies. The cones adhere to the branches 

 many years, and may be partly enclosed in the growing wood. 



