140 THE PINES 



when sapwood is converted into heartwood eliminates, in 

 some way, much of the volatile portion of the turpentine 

 with which it was stored and the heartwood is left com- 

 paratively free from it. There is little difference between 

 spring and summer wood in color or hardness, and this 

 makes it easy to work. The medullary rays are small, num- 

 erous but not conspicuous. 



Some virgin White Pine produces wood softer than the 

 average, and that fact has led to the belief by some that 

 there are several varieties of that tree. This may be true, 

 as it is well known that there is a difference in the wood, 

 and old lumbermen and woodworkers agree that "cork 

 pine " or "pumpkin pine " is quite superior in quality to 

 any other. Still, this difference may come about through 

 age or surroundings. Such wood is usually, but not always, 

 found in trees that stand apart from their kind frequently 

 among hardwoods and are old and near the end of life. 

 The matter is well worth investigating, for there is occa- 

 sionally a marked difference in the character of the wood. 



Unfortunately for natural reproduction the tree does not 

 produce seed in early life. While it occasionally bears 

 cones before the age of twenty years, fertile seeds will sel- 

 dom be found in them ; and only when growing in the open 

 can it be depended upon to bear seed before the age of thirty- 

 five or forty years. At the best, it is not a prolific or a reg- 

 ular seed-bearing tree. Only once in five or six years can it 

 be relied upon to produce a crop. A tree blossoming in the 

 spring of one year does not perfect its seed until late in the 

 summer of the succeeding one. The cones do not attain a 

 growth of over three fourths of an inch in length and five 

 sixteenths of an inch in diameter until the spring of the 

 second year. They then begin to grow very rapidly and by 

 the first of August will reach full size, which runs from five 

 to seven inches in length sometimes eight inches and 

 from seven sixteenths to one and one eighth inches in dia- 

 meter at the largest part. They are of a bronze green in 

 color until they open, and they then turn to a bright brown. 



