232 TREES 



ered with it, forming bountiful orchards for the red man. 

 Being so low and accessible, the cones are easily beaten off 

 with poles, and the nuts are procured by roasting until the 

 scales open. To the tribes of the desert and sage plains 

 these seeds are the staff of life. They are eaten either raw 

 or parched, or in the form of mush, or cakes, after being 

 pounded into meal. The time of nut harvest is the 

 merriest time of the year. An industrious, squirrelish 

 family can gather fifty or sixty bushels in a single month 

 before the snow comes, and then their bread for the winter 

 is sure." 



THE PITCH PINES 



Pitch pines have usually heavy coarse-grained, dark- 

 colored wood, rich in resin — a nuisance to the carpenter. 

 The leaf -bundles have persistent sheaths. The cone scales 

 are thick and usually armed. "Hard pine" is a car- 

 penter's synonym. The group includes some of the most 

 valuable timber trees in American forests. 



The Longleaf Pine 



P. palustris. Mill. 



The longleaf pine is preeminent in importance in the 

 lumber trade and in the production of naval stores. It 

 stretches in a belt about one hundred and twenty-five 

 miles wide, somewhat back from the coast, all the way 

 from Virginia to Tampa Bay and west to the Mississippi 

 River. Isolated forests are scattered in northern Ala- 

 bama, Louisiana, and Texas. 



The trees are tall, often exceeding one hundred feet in 

 height; with trunks slender in proportion, rarely reaching 

 three feet in diameter. The narrow, irregular head is 

 formed of short stout twisted limbs on the upper third of 



