238 TREES 



worthless land from New Brunswick to Georgia and west 

 to Ontario and Kentucky. Occasionally in cultivation the 

 tree is symmetrical, and grows to considerable size. In the 

 most favorable situations, however, it rarely exceeds fifty 

 feet in height, with gnarled rough branches, oftenest irreg- 

 ular in form and becoming painfully grotesque with age. 

 The persistence of its clustered black cones adds to the 

 tree's ugliness; and the tufted, scant foliage has a sickly 

 yellowish-green color when new, and becomes darker and 

 twisted the second year. The cones are armed with stout 

 thorns and often remain on the trees ten or twelve years. 

 The knots, particularly, are rich in resin — the dehght of 

 camping parties. "Pine-knots" and "candle wood" are 

 household necessities in regions where these trees are the 

 prevailing species of pine. 



Starved as is its existence, the pitch pine springs up with 

 amazing vigor after a fire. Suckers are sent up about the 

 roots of the fire-killed trees, and the wind scatters the seeds 

 broadcast for a new crop. The chief merit of the tree is 

 that it grows on worthless land, and holds with its gnarled 

 roots the shifting sand-dunes of the New-England Coast 

 better than any other tree. 



The Gray Pine 



P. divaricata, Sudw. 



The gray pine goes farther north than any other pine, 

 following the McKenzie River to the Arctic Circle. From 

 Nova Scotia to the Athabasca River, it covers barren 

 ground, reaching its greatest height, seventy feet, in pure 

 forests north of Lake Superior. In Michigan it forms the 

 "jack-pine plains " of the Lower Peninsula. As a rule it is 



