WHITE PINE 137 



tain. When in favorable situations it attains an age of 

 three hundred or more years, and grows to a height of one 

 hundred and fifty feet, with a diameter of five feet. Greater 

 heights and diameters are recorded, but they are rare. In 

 the average forest it has not often been found over three 

 feet in diameter or more than one hundred and twenty-five 

 feet high. When grown closely surrounded in its early life 

 by trees of its own or other species it will be tall and 

 straight, with little taper of stem, and clean of limbs for 

 fifty, sixty, seventy feet, or even more, from the ground. 

 It was from such trees that the " panel " boards and planks 

 of old-time lumbering days were cut, and from such came 

 the tall masts some of them one hundred and ten feet 

 high that held aloft the sails of many a gallant ship. 



Whoever has once seen the soft, flexible, dark green 

 leaves of the White Pine will never forget them. They are 

 from three to five inches long, encased in a sheath at the 

 base, invariably five in number, and when all are pressed 

 together form a cylinder, each leaf occupying one fifth of 

 the space inclosed by the sheath. They fall in early autumn 

 of their second season. 



The limbs have heartwood and sapwood the same as the 

 stem ; the heartwood of those next to the stem is more 

 highly charged with resin than any other part of the tree, 

 and if the limbs are permitted to grow to any considerable 

 size they will not drop off, if they die, as the resin prevents 

 their decay; such limbs cause the objectionable black and 

 loose knots in the lumber. 1 Close planting is the only 

 remedy for this. Early shade causes the limbs to die before 



1 It is a singular fact that the limhs of a close stand of White Pine will 

 not drop off as quickly in some sections of the country as in others. This is 

 notably so from central Pennsylvania southward. The reason for this may 

 be that in the warmer regions there is more resin in the limbs and, hence, 

 they do not decay as rapidly. The claim that White Pine will clean itself 

 more satisfactorily when planted with other species is not necessarily estab- 

 lished. While it cleans itself well there, the fact remains that it will do so 

 when in a pure stand, if planted close enough. In each case the result is de- 

 termined by the amount of shade in early life. The limbs should be killed 

 when small, and before the resinous heartwood in them is large. 



