AMERICAN FOREST TREES 707 



become entirely overgrown and hidden by bark and wood hence the name knobcone. 

 The wood is light, soft, weak, brittle; the growth is slow and the annual rings are 

 narrow. The resin passages are large and numerous. The average height of the 

 mature knobcone pine is from twenty-five to forty feet, and the trunk diameter eight 

 to twelve inches. It grows on dry mountain regions of California and Oregon, and is 

 not a valuable timber tree. A little is occasionally sawed in small dimensions, but 

 the principal use is for mine props. It is short lived, even when it does not fall a 

 victim to accidents. In accordance with the provisions of nature, it prepares for 

 early death by bearing seeds when only five or six feet high. The cones act as 

 storing places for seed, sometimes during the whole life of the tree. Thus a 

 knobcone pine may hold in its tightly closed cones the seeds produced during the 

 tree's whole life. When death overtakes it, the cones open and scatter the seeds. 

 The accumulated crops may total three or four pounds of seeds. Fire usually kills 

 the trees, but the heat is generally not sufficient to burn the cones. When they open 

 soon after the fire has passed, they find a bared mineral soil ready to receive them. 

 The knobcone pine lives in adversity and usually dies by violence. 



ARIZONA PINE (Pinus arizonica). This tree is confined to the mountains of 

 southern Arizona at from 6,000 to 8,000 feet above sea level. It is the prevailing 

 pine near the summit of the Santa Catalina mountains. Much of the timber is of 

 small size and yields only inferior lumber; but when larger trunks are obtainable, 

 the lumber grades with western yellow pine, and goes to market with it. Arizona 

 pine is medium light, soft, not strong, rather brittle, of slow growth, with the summer- 

 wood comparatively broad and very resinous; color, light red or often yellow, the 

 sapwood lighter yellow or white. The leaves are in clusters of five and are tufted at 

 the ends of the branches. They are from five to seven inches long, and are deciduous 

 the third year. 



DWARF JUNIPER (Juniperus communis) is an interesting tree because its range 

 practically runs round the world in the north temperate and frigid zones, but in the 

 United States the only reported use of the wood is in southern Illinois where it 

 grows on the limestone hills and is occasionally cut for fence posts. In nearly all 

 other parts of its range in this country it is little more than a shrub. Some trees 

 with a spread of limbs twenty feet across are only three or four feet high. The seeds 

 mature slowly, not ripening until the third year; and they often hang a year or two 

 after ripening. The wood is narrow-ringed, hard, very durable in contact with the 

 soil, of light brown color, with pale sapwood. In Europe the aromatic fruit of this 

 tree is used in large quantities to flavor gin, but there is no report that it has been so 

 employed in this country. In the United States it occurs in Pennsylvania and 

 northward, and northward from Illinois, and throughout the Rocky Mountains 

 north of Texas. It occurs on the Pacific coast north of California. It grows from 

 Greenland to Alaska, and through Siberia, and northern Europe. 



DROOPING JUNIPER (Juniperus flaccidd) is confined in the United States to the 

 Chisos mountains in western Texas, but grows in Mexico. The tree attains a height 

 of thirty feet and a diameter of one. [Its name refers to its graceful branches. It has 

 been planted in this country less than in southern Europe and northern Africa. The 

 bark is light cinnamon-brown, and easily separates in loose, papery scales. The 

 lumberman will never go far to procure drooping juniper logs. They are too small, 

 scarce, and of form too poor. The wood has the usual characteristics of the junipers 

 which grow in western mountains. It looks more like alligator juniper than any 

 other. In Texas it goes to the lathe to be manufactured into candlesticks, pin boxes, 

 picture molding, and other articles of turnery. 



