27 



lateral branchlets, pale green, 2 '-3' long, the scale-tips tinged with rose color. Fruit ovoid- 

 conic, often reflexed, dark red-brown and lustrous, with thin nearly flat scales, and stout 

 or slender persistent prickles, opening in the autumn and slowly shedding their seeds, 

 turning dark reddish brown and remaining on the branches for three or four years; 

 seeds nearly oval, full and rounded, \' long, with a thin pale brown rough shell, their 

 wings broadest at the middle, f long, about f wide. 



A tree, usually 30-40 high, with a short trunk rarely more than 18' in diameter, long 

 horizontal or pendulous branches in remote whorls forming a broad open often flat-topped 

 pyramid, and slender tough flexible branchlets at first pale green or green tinged with 

 purple' and covered with a glaucous bloom, becoming purple and later light gray-brown; 

 toward the western limits of its range a tree frequently 100 tall, with a trunk 2^-3 in 





Fig. 31 



diameter. Bark of the trunk \'-\' thick, broken by shallow fissures into flat plate-like 

 scales separating on the surface into thin closely appressed dark brown scales tinged 

 with red. Wood light, soft, not strong, brittle, coarse-grained, durable in contact with 

 the soil, light orange color, with thick nearly white sapwood; often used for fuel and 

 occasionally manufactured into lumber. 



Distribution. Middle and southern New Jersey; Plymouth, Luzerne County, and cen- 

 tral, southern and western Pennsylvania to Columbia County, Georgia, Dallas County, 

 Alabama (near Selma, T. G. Harbison), and to the hills of northeastern Mississippi 

 (Bear Creek near its junction with the Tennessee River, E. N. Lowe}, through eastern 

 and middle Tennessee to western Kentucky and to southeastern and southern (Scioto 

 County) Ohio, and southern Indiana; usually small in the Atlantic states and only on 

 light sandy soil, spreading rapidly over exhausted fields; of its largest size west of the 

 Alleghany Mountains on the low hills of southern Indiana. 



25. Firms clausa Sarg. Sand Pine. Spruce Pine. 



Leaves slender, flexible, dark green, 2'-3|' long, marked by 10-20 rows of stomata, de- 

 ciduous during their third and fourth years. Flowers: male in short crowded spikes, dark 

 orange color; female lateral on stout peduncles. Fruit elongated ovoid-conic, often oblique 

 at base, usually clustered and reflexed, 2'-3|' long, nearly sessile or short-stalked, with 

 convex scales armed with short stout straight or recurved prickles, becoming dark yellow- 

 brown in autumn; some of the cones opening at once, others remaining closed for three or 

 four years before liberating their seeds, ultimately turning to an ashy gray color; others 

 still unopened becoming enveloped in the growing tissues of the stem and branches and 

 finally entirely covered by them; seeds nearly triangular, compressed, ' long, with a 



