The Pines 



the various forms of P. ponderosa. On this the botanists leaned 

 content, until, alack! somebody breal<s the reed by announcing 

 an exception! The wood is so heavy that the logs have to dry for 

 a while before they can be floated down stream to the mills. 

 Hence, ponderosa. 



The name is not the point of greatest interest. If there is to 

 be a re-christening by the botanists we shall hear of it in good 

 season. Let us take a hand, though, in blotting out the name, 

 " bull pine," absurd and meaningless as it is misleading. It has 

 been given variously by ignorant frontiersmen to any pine that 

 attains large dimensions. 



The yellow pine was first discovered by the members of the 

 Lewis and Clark expedition, in 1804, while they were going up 

 the Missouri River. Twenty-two later, David Douglas found the 

 trees growing near the Spokane River. He suggested then the 

 name they now bear, because of their ponderous bulk, and sent 

 seeds and young plants to European gardeners. 



In cultivation the tree does fairly well in the Eastern States 

 and in Europe, though slow of growth and liable to disease. 

 The best form in cultivation is var. Jeffreyi. 



The Indians of the West long ago discovered that though 

 the seeds of the yellow pine are inedible, yet the inner bark in 

 spring is sweet and nutritious. So they stripped and scraped 

 the bark for its mucilaginous living layer. The branchlets are 

 fragrant, giving out when crushed an odour as of orange peel. 



Shortleaf Pine (P. echinata, Mill.) — A slender trunk, 

 with loose, round or pyramidal head, 80 to 120 feet high. Bark 

 thick, cleft into square plates, with cinnamon-red scales. Young 

 shoots violet. Wood orange or yellow-brown, hard, heavy, 

 durable, strong, coarse grained, with broad bands of small sum- 

 mer cells in each annual layer. Buds plump, blunt, scaly. 

 Leaves in clusters of twos or threes; dark blue-green; acute, 

 slender, soft and flexible, 3 to 5 inches long, in silvery white 

 sheath which turns brownish. Flowers: staminate crowded, 

 subterminal, purplish; pistillate 2 to 4, stalked, subterminal or 

 terminal on adventitious spurs; purplish or rose pink. Fruit 

 biennial, abundant, i^ to 2^ inches long, ovate, tapering, 

 scales thickened, 4-angled at tip, with or without short, recurved 

 prickle, seeds winged. Old cones persist several years. Pre- 

 ferred habitat, well drained, gravelly soil with clay intermixed; 



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