LOBLOLLY PINE 



(Pinus Tada) 



FEW trees have more names than this. The names, however, may 

 be separated into groups, one group referring to the foliage, another 

 to the situations in which the tree grows, and a third to certain characters 

 or uses of the wood. Names descriptive of the leaves are longschat pine, 

 longshucks pine, shortleaf pine, foxtail pine, and longstraw pine. The 

 names which refer to locality or situation are loblolly pine, old-field pine, 

 slash pine, black slash pine, Virginia pine, meadow pine and swamp 

 pine. Names which refer to the character of the wood or of the standing 

 tree are torch pine, rosemary pine, frankincense pine, cornstalk pine, 

 spruce pine, and yellow pine. Not one of these names is applied to the 

 tree in its entire range, and it has several names other than those listed. 

 Sap pine is widely applied to the lumber, because the tree's sapwood is 

 very thick, sometimes amounting to eighty per cent of a trunk. It has 

 borne the name old-field pine for a hundred and fifty years in Virginia, 

 and the name suggests a good deal of history. Some of the improvident 

 early Virginia tobacco growers neglected to fertilize their fields, and the 

 land wore out under constant cropping, and was abandoned. The pine 

 quickly took possession, for the fields which were too far exhausted to 

 produce tobacco or corn were amply able to grow dense stands of lob- 

 lolly pine, and the farmers noticing this, called it old-field pine. It has 

 been taking possession of abandoned fields in Virginia and North Carolina 

 ever since, and the name still applies. The tree grows from New Jersey 

 to Florida, west to Texas, north to Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West 

 Virginia, but it does not cover the whole territory thus outlined. It is 

 very scarce near its northern limit. There is evidence that the range 

 of loblolly has extended in historic times, not into new or distant regions, 

 but outside the borders which once marked its range. Since white men 

 in Texas stopped the Indians' grass fires, the pine has encroached upon 

 the prairie. Early writers in Virginia and North Carolina spoke of pine 

 as scarce or totally wanting, except on the immediate coast. It is now 

 found from one hundred to two hundred miles inland, and many saw- 

 mills now cut logs which have grown in fields abandoned since the 

 Revolutionary war. This has occurred on the Atlantic coast rather than 

 west of the Appalachian ranges of mountains. Virginia has more 

 sawmills than any other state, and many of them are working on 

 loblolly pine which has grown in the last hundred years. 



The tree bears seeds abundantly and scatters them widely. It is 

 vigorous, grows with great rapidity, and is able to fight its way if it finds 



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