ADDITIONAL NOTES ON LONGLEAF PINE. 



By FiLUiERT Roth. 

 (September 1, 1897.) 



Tliougli this species is well recognized wherever it grows, aud receives almost uuiversally the 

 name of Longleaf or Lougstraw Piue, the two terms "Yellow Pine" and '• Pitch Pino" .are often 

 confusing. Unfortunately, these names are most common at the points of manufacture and with 

 men who know but little about the trees themselves. Whenever used knowingly, the term " Yellow 

 Pine" refers to very old, slow-grown trees of Longleaf, with a very flue, smooth bark, extremely line 

 grain (narrow rings), and with very narrow sai>wood (1 inch or less). The term " Pitch Pine," on 

 the other hand, refers to younger trees, of more rapid growth, wider sap, and consequently with 

 more pitch or resin. It is self-evident from this that, as these trees grow older, intermediate 

 forms occur to which one man gives one name, the next man another. 



In its distribution the Longleaf presents some vei-y interesting features. In I^forth Carolina, 

 on the north side of the Albemarle Sound, this tree is frequently wanting over large tracts, and then 

 again covers several hundred acres almost to the exclusion of other pines. Along the western 

 coast of Florida it goes as far south as Fort Myers, on the Oaloosahatchee Eiver, comes right up to 

 the salt marshes or bluffs, with but a slight fringing of Cuban and Pond Pine, except in the few cases 

 where large hammock swamps, like the Gulf Hammock and Chessahowitzka Swamp, occupy the 

 space between pinery and ocean. In Texas the Longleaf is rather sharply limited, and the 

 transition is very abrupt from Longleaf Pine forest into a pinery of Loblolly and Shortleaf mixed 

 with hard woods. 



As mentioned in the monograph, the dimensions to which the tree grows do not vary greatly 

 in different sections from East to West. There are just as fine trees in North Carolina as occur in 

 Georgia or in Louisiana and Texas. An exception to this occurs in the case of the extremely 

 barren, dry sands of Florida, where this tree commonly attaiiis a height of scarcely GO feet, with 

 about 25 to 3.5 feet of log timber. Frequently thousands of trees are seen on a section with a total 

 height of less than .50 feet, and the top flattened, resembling more that of river-bank cypress than 

 pine. Injustice to this pine, however, it must be said that what it lacks in size it fully makes up 

 in quality, for there is no finer-grained, heavier, and stronger pine in the market than is cut on 

 these pine sand barrens of Florida. Strange to say, even on these dry and barren sands the 

 development or the growth of the young tree is most astonishing. Leaders (end shoots) of over 

 24 inches in length on trees G to 15 feet high are common, and the increase in diameter is fully 

 in keeping with this rapid upward growth. 



In the Caroliuas, Georgia, and Florida there are springing up multitudes of groves of young 

 Longleaf Pines, and all stages may be seen, from the seedling, resembling much more a large 

 bunch of coarse grass than a pine, and the sapling with its straight, stiff, few-limbed but never 

 bush-like form, to the pole size, 40 to GO feet high and 8 inches in diameter, with its small crown 

 and a shaft well cleaned of branches, wliether grown in the open or in the midst of a thicket. 



Unfortunately, many of these fine young groves fall victims to the universal bleeding for 

 turpentine, followed by fire, which, however, in many localities is now recognized by the prudent 

 resident as fast becoming a curse to the community, not only by destroying a valuable source 

 of revenue, but by alienating people from their legitimate business of farming. Turpentine 

 orcharding is still continued everywhere in the pinery of North Carolina along and west of the 

 Wilmington and Weldon Railroad. Tlius far the very narrow sapwood, ijromising but a small 

 yield and frequently leading to " dry faces," i. e., a drying up of that portion of the tree, seems to 

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