The Pines 



only three or four whorls of branches coming out from its central 

 stem, or a great forest tree towering above its broad-leaved 

 neighbours, noble and picturesque, though storms have destroyed 

 the symmetry of its youth. 



Stroke the leaves of a white-pine branch — they are soft and 

 flexible. As they sway in the wind they are graceful and light; 

 the tree seems decked with plumes of dark blue-green. The 

 young shoots, pale yellowish green, lighten the sombre pine 

 woods, and the clustering catkins, shaking out their abundant 

 pollen, sift gold dust through the whole forest. The pistillate 

 flowers show themselves clustered about the terminal bud, which 

 keeps on growing, leaving them to ripen, through two seasons, 

 into long, slender green cones. The pinkish purple of these tiny 

 cone flowers adds a rich colour to the upper twigs, where they 

 stand erect until autumn. Below them, hanging down with their 

 weight, are the half-grown cones, slim, fmger-like and green, 

 with tight, smooth scales, that will turn brown and discharge 

 their ripened seed at the end of their second summer. 



This white pine of ours is built on a semi-decimal plan, 

 which it is quite worth our while to notice. In the gracefully 

 winged seed, that reminds us of the samara of a maple, there are 

 ten cotyledons, or seed leaves, that mount the stem, and sur- 

 round the precious terminal bud when the seed germinates. 

 This bud is the " leader." If anything happens to it the central 

 shaft is maimed for life, and either one side bud will have to bend 

 upward and take the leader's place, or two will divide the honour, 

 and a forked pine is the result. 



The buds on the crown of a baby white pine cluster at the 

 top — a circle of five around the central bud. In spring the leader 

 grows upward, and at its base five branches radiate. Next year 

 the crown repeats the same story, and the tips of the side 

 branches divide and elongate in the same way. The best growth 

 is generally made by the crown buds in the very top of the tree. 

 So it happens that we may count the years of our sapling by the 

 whorls of branches it bears. In the early years the growth is 

 beautifully symmetrical, if there is room for sun and air to reach 

 the little tree. Later the branches crowd each other, and some 

 are killed. In deep woods where trees interfere, the stems are 

 bare of living branches almost to the top. 



This is the lumberman's pine, a tree whose limbs die so 

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