32 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



Creek, Florida, seldom extending more than thirty miles inland ; eastern Florida 

 from the neighborhood of St. Augustine to New River, occupying a narrow belt 

 usually not more than a mile or two wide, and covering sandy wind-swept plains ; 

 growing to its largest size on the east coast of Florida near the head of Halifax 

 River. 



32. Pinus muricata, D. Don. Prickle-cone Pine. 



Leaves in crowded clusters, thick, rigid, dark yellow-green, 4'-6' long, beginning 

 to fall in their second year. Flowers: staminate in elongated spikes, orange- 



colored ; pistillate short-stalked, whorled, 2 whorls often being produced on the 

 shoot of the year. Fruit ovate-oblong, oblique at the base, sessile, in clusters of 3-5 

 or sometimes of 7, 2'-3' but usually about 3' long, becoming light chestnut-brown 

 and lustrous, with scales much thickened on the outside of the cone, those toward 

 its base produced into stout mammillate incurved knobs sometimes armed with stout 

 flattened spur-like spines incurved above the middle of the cone and recurved 

 toward its apex, and on the inside of the cone slightly flattened and armed with 

 stout or slender straight prickles; often remaining closed for several years and usu- 

 ally persistent on the stem and branches during the entire life of the tree without 

 becoming imbedded in the wood ; seeds nearly triangular, \' long, with a thin 

 nearly black roughened shell, their wings broadest above the middle, oblique at the 

 apex, nearly 1' long and \' wide. 



A tree, usually 40-50 but occasionally 90 high, with a trunk 2-3 in diame- 

 ter, thick spreading branches covered with dark scaly bark, in youth forming a 

 regular pyramid, and at maturity a handsome compact round-topped head of dense 

 tufted foliage, and stout branchlets dark orange-green at first, turning orange- 

 brown more or less tinged with purple. Bark of the lower part of the trunk often 

 4'-6' thick and deeply divided into long narrow rounded ridges roughened by closely 

 appressed dark purplish brown scales. Wood light, very strong, hard, rather 

 coarse-grained, light brown, with thick nearly white sapwood ; occasionally manu- 

 factured into lumber. 



Distribution. California coast region from Mendocino County southward, usually 

 in widely separated localities to Tomales Point, north of the Bay of San Francisco, 



