PITCH PINE G.N. K.309 



PITCH PINE 



Pinus palustris Mill. Coniferse. Abietineae. 



A hard heavy wood very heavily charged with resin which gives it 

 a peculiar transparence. The resin is in a solid condition and the wood 

 does not bleed. Smell when worked, powerful and vinous. Reaction 

 with perchloride of iron, brown precipitate. 



Structure, much as in Pinus sylvestris. Resin-canals abundant. 



Pits in the cross-field always more than one, frequently four, but they 

 are still proportionately large and occupy the whole space (not as in 

 Abies). Walls of the ray-tracheids exceedingly rugged and projecting 

 so much inwards as to make it difficult to see the pits. 



Rays of two kinds as in the Pines generally and of much the same 

 shape and structure as in Scots Fir, i.e. spindle-shaped, slender, and 

 long-drawn-out (acicular or rat-tailed). 



May be confused with: May be distinguished by: 



Scots Fir when the latter is Three or four large pits in the 

 heavily charged with resin (one cross-field, seldom two. 

 large pit in the cross-field, seldom 

 two). 



Note. There are other species which pass under the name of Pitch 

 Pine in the U.S.A. and even P. sylvestris is occasionally so-called. The 

 present species (P. palustris) is supposed to furnish the Pitch Pine 

 of commerce as described above, but the only justification until recently 

 seems to be that P. palustris is the only one exported from U.S.A. 

 to Europe. 



Mr V. Braid, who kindly undertook the investigation of all the sp*-u- 

 mens in the collection of the School of Forestry, has proved that this 

 supposition is correct. Prof. Record, of Yale, when writing of Pitch 

 Pine, refers to it as the Longleaf or Georgia Pine. (See Archives of the 

 Cambridge Forestry Association, No. 2, 1920.) 



39 



