CHRISTMAS TREES 321 



needles in a tuft, the number being characteristic of 

 different species, some having five, others three, others 

 two, and the American Pinus monophylla having only 

 one. The general shape of these trees is not tapering 

 like the spruce with unforked trunk, but they usually 

 shed the lower branches as growth goes on, and present 

 in most cases a trunk carrying an umbrella-like expanse 

 of foliage-bearing branches, or several such expanses. 

 The scales which form the cones in the genus Pinus are 

 (with few exceptions, such as the Weymouth pine) not flat 

 and flexible, but are thickened, swollen, and even knob- 

 like and wooden at the exposed part, which is armed 

 with a weak or a strong prickle (see Figs. 39, 40, and 41). 

 The cones do not ripen until the end of the second or 

 third season ; they may be, according to species, erect, 

 pendulous, or horizontal, and vary in size in different 

 species. In some they remain closed on the trees for 

 an indefinite period (even fifteen or twenty years), until 

 opened by the heat of a forest fire or of an exceptionally 

 hot season. 



The Scots fir, Pinus sylvestris (Fig. 31), called Pin de 

 Geneve by the French, has a very wide range. It extends 

 eastward and northward from the Sierra Nevada, in 

 Spain, through Europe and Russian Asia ; its northern 

 limit approaches the Arctic circle, its southern limit is 

 formed by the great mountain chains of the Alps, 

 Caucasus, and Altai range of Asia. The beautiful blue- 

 green colour of its needles, the fine red-brown tint of 

 its trunk and branches, and the graceful spread of its 

 foliage high up on a few great, unequally-grown branches 

 springing from its tall, bare trunk, are amongst the most 

 picturesque features of English landscape. In the 

 southern counties " clumps " of a dozen or score of these 

 graceful trees are often to be seen on some isolated hill- 



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