20 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



19. Fiuus rigida, Mill. Pitch Pine. 



Leaves stout, rigid, dark yellow-green, marked on the 3 faces by many rows of 

 stomata, 3'-5' long, standing stiffly and at right angles with the branches, decidu- 

 ous during their second year. 

 Flowers : staminate in short 

 crowded spikes, yellow or 

 rarely purple ; pistillate often 

 clustered and raised on short 

 stout stems, light green more 

 or less tinged with rose color. 

 Fruit ovate-conical or ovate, 

 nearly sessile, often clustered, 

 l'-3|' long, becoming light 

 brown, with thin flat scales 

 armed with recurved rigid 

 prickles, often remaining on 

 the branches for ten or twelve 



2.O '^^^^^^ years ; seeds nearly triangular, 



full and rounded on the sides, 

 ^' long, with a thin dark brown 



mottled roughened shell and wings broadest below the middle, gradually narrowed 

 to the very oblique apex, |' long, ^' wide. 



A tree, 50-60 or rarely 80 high, with a short trunk occasionall}' 3 in diameter, 

 thick contorted often pendulous branches covered with thick much roughened bark, 

 forming a round-topped thick head, often irregular and picturesque, and stout 

 bright green branchlets becoming dull orange color during their first winter and 

 dark gray-brown at the end of four or five years; often fruitful when only a few feet 

 high. Bark of young stems thin and broken into plate-like dark red-brown scales, 

 becoming on old trunks f'-l^' thick, deeply and irregularly fissured and divided 

 into broad flat connected ridges separating on the surface into thick dark red-brown 

 scales often tinged with purple. Wood light, soft, not strong, brittle, coarse- 

 grained, very durable, light brown or red, with thick yellow or often white sap- 

 wood ; largely used for fuel and in the manufacture of charcoal ; occasionally sawed 

 into lumber. 



Distribution. Sandy plains and dry gravelly uplands, or less frequently cold deep 

 swamps ; valley of the St. John River in New Brunswick to the northern shores of 

 Lake Ontario, southward in the Atlantic states to northern Georgia; crossing the 

 Alleghany Mountains to their western foothills in West Virginia, Kentucky, and 

 Tennessee ; very abundant on the Atlantic coast south of Massachusetts Bay ; often 

 forming extensive forests in southern New Jersey. 



20. Finus serotina, Michx. Pond Pine. Marsh Pine. 



Leaves in clusters of 3 or occasionally of 4, slender, flexuose, dark yellow-green, 

 6'-8' long, marked by numerous rows of stomata on the 3 faces, deciduous dur- 

 ing their third and fourth years. Flowers : staminate in crowded spikes, dark 

 orange color ; pistillate clustered or in pairs on stout stems. Fruit subglobose to 

 ovate-oblong, full and rounded or pointed at the apex, subsessile or short-stalked, 

 horizontal or slightly declinate, 2'-2' long, with thin nearly flat scales armed with 



