CLASS III. GYMNOSPERM^E 



CONIFERS 



Trees or shrubs with resinous juice, and usually rigid, subulate 

 leaves, often in fascicles and entire in the European genera. Flowers 

 monoecious or dioecious. Male flowers in catkins, of i or more 

 anthers, female flowers solitary or in cones of I or more, sessile, 

 naked, ovules, placed on a bract or open carpellary leaf. Fruit a 

 cone or berry. 



An extensive family spread over the whole globe. 



PlNUS L. 



Trees with linear or subulate, fascicled leaves. Male catkins 

 in spikes of many 2-celled anthers. Cone ripening the second year. 

 Ovules 2, inverted and adnate to the carpellary leaf. 



Pinus montana Miller. 



Leaves narrowly linear, flat or channelled on the upper side, 

 convex below, mucronate, scarcely acicular, in pairs within a sheath, 

 persistent. Male catkins long, congregated in whorled spikes at 

 the base of this year's shoots. Female catkins oval or longer, 

 solitary, or 2-6 together, in the first year at the apex of this year's 

 shoot, in the second year lateral from the growth of a new shoot, 

 erect during and after flowering, spreading obliquely or horizontally 

 when ripe, sessile. Scales nearly as long as the carpellary leaves 

 at the time of flowering, and more or less concealing them. Cones 

 ovate or ovate-conical before opening. Scales of cone variously 

 spathulate, compressed, 3-sided ; shield within an irregularly 

 4-cornered or nearly 3-cornered beak. 



A tree, with shorter trunk and prostrate or ascending branches 

 in the form known as P. Mughus, often covering large tracts in 

 rocky Alpine slopes ; 4400-7500 feet. May, June. 



The short form is more especially found on limestone ; the 

 taller tree grows in the Alps and sub- Alps, and in Swiss peat-mosses 

 descends to 2000 feet above sea-level. 



Distribution. Carpathians ; Eastern, Central, and Western 

 Alps ; Jura, Vosges, Pyrenees, Caucasus ; Central and Eastern 

 Europe. 



Pinus uncinata Ramd. is a variety of the above with the bosses 



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