MIDDLE AND EAST TENNESSEE. 13 



cal distribution is the little-known Table Mountain pine 

 (Pinus pungens), a tree growing naturally only from the 

 Alleghany Mountains of Pennsylvania to the mountains 

 of East Tennessee. It is rarely distinguished locally, 

 and, along with the pitch pine, is commony called black 

 pine. But its big, stout-prickled cones and two-leaved 

 fascicles quickly distinguish it from its three-leaved asso- 

 ciate. It usually begins high up on the rocky slopes, 

 where the pitch pine ceases, and forms open stands of 

 low, stunted trees, sometimes interspersed with gnarled 

 chestnut oak (Quercus prinus). The sites where these 

 pines grow is often so bare and rocky as to scarcely sup- 

 port any other form of vegetation, showing a great nat- 

 ural or acquired adaptation to dry and unfavorable sit- 

 uations. The short, limby trunks and usually inaccessi- 

 ble location of this pine allows it to grow on unmolested 

 by the mountain lumbermen, serving the very important 

 purpose of checking the rush of melting snow and ice. 



The last of the hardwood pines, the loblolly (Pinus 

 iaeda), forms but a small part of the pine growth 

 of East Tennessee, occurring chiefly and in scattering 

 stands near the southeastern border of the state. This 

 pine has a most abundant distribution in the South At- 

 lantic and Gulf States. 



But descending now to the lower levels of the East 

 Tennessee mountain region, the white pine (Pinus stro- 

 lus) found here forms an interesting feature of the forest 

 growth. As is well known, East Tennessee and Western 

 North Carolina form the southern limit in the distribu- 

 tion of this Northern pine. 



Aside from professional lumbermen of the state, it is 

 doubtless true that but few who travel through East 

 Tennessee ever suspect that the Northern white pine ex- 

 ists in commercial quantities among those forest-clad 

 mountains; but there are in some parts hundreds and in 

 others thousands of acres of standing white pine, which 

 would yield from five thousand to fifty thousand, and 

 in a few localities even the astonishingly large figure 

 of one hundred thousand, feet per acre. The bulk of this 



