GROWTH OF SPRUCE PIXE. 



139 



The male flowers are lateral, sessile, and about one-half to thiee-lbiirtlis of an inch long, 

 slender, siirrounded by live to six pairs of short ovate, rather obtuse stiff scales, with a uari'ow, 

 membranaceous lacerated border. The crest of the anther is elliptical, with tine deuticulatious. 

 The small female aments are mostly single, short stalked, the carpellary scales laucesliaped with 

 slender tips and subtended by the short infertile bract. 



The cones are mostly single with a short stock and of various shapes on the same tree, from 

 round to oblong-ovate or more or less cone-shaped, from 1^ to 2 inches long, and, on the opening 

 of the scales from three-fourths to 1 inch wide, of a light tawny color. The scales are softer 

 and more flexible than in the Shortleaf Pine, the apophysis broader, with the umbo depressed, 

 unarmed, or with a minute, weak, erect, and deciduous prickle, the ridge faint, hazel-browu on 

 the inside. The somewhat triangular roughish seeds, black with brown specks, about three- 

 sixteenths of an inch long and one eighth inch wide, separating easily from the wing, which is 

 little over one-half inch long and surrounds the seed to the base. 



PROGRESS OF DEVELOPMENT. 



The Spruce Pine begins to flower and to produce perfect seeds at an age of twelve to fifteen 

 years, in greatest abundance between twenty and forty years; the flowers appear during the 

 earliest part of March; shortly after pollination the female ements assume a horizontal position, 

 and finally became more or less reflected. At the end of the first season the conelets are of the 

 size of a large pea. The cones mature in the second year in the month of September; the seeds 

 are freely shed early in the fall. They germinate during the fall and early in the coming spring; 

 the plantlets, with eight to ten slender, soft cotyledons, are over an inch long. The terminal bud 

 develops rapidly, densely covered with the slender, soft primary leaves which are sharp pointed 

 and frequently over an inch in length. Early in April seedlings are found over one half foot long, 

 later in the season fascicles of the foliage leaves appear in the axils of the upper primary leaves, 

 when the lower wither and disappear near the end of the season. At this stage the seedlings are 

 generally a foot high with the root system less developed than in its kindred species at the same 

 age; the taproot scarcely 2 inches in length with a few short lateral roots. 



With the twentieth year the trees are generally from 30 to 35 feet high and 4 to 4J inches in 

 diameter, the stem clear of limbs for the length of about 12 feet. They attain their full growth 

 at an age of from sixty to seventy-five years. 



The trees for the United States timber tests from the border of the swamps on the banks of 

 the Tensaw Eiver, in Baldwin County, Ala., showed the following dimensions and age: 



Meaaurenienta of five trees. 



From these figures it appears that the two trees forty-six and fifty-three (average forty-nine) 

 years old have an average volume of 63 cubic feet and grew at the rate of about 1.3 cubic feet, 

 while the three trees seventy-five to eighty-three (average seventy-eight) years old have an 

 average volume of about 152 cubic feet and an average yearly growth of about 2 cubic feet. The 

 following represents a typical case: 



Growth of Spruce Fine. 



i add about three years. 



