2 BULLETIN 244, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



GEOGRAPHICAL AND ECONOMIC RANGE. 



Shortleaf pine occurs in 24 of the States. Its geographical range 

 includes all the States east of the Mississippi River, except Wisconsin, 

 Michigan, and New England, and six States west of the Mississippi. 

 It extends from the Hudson River Valley in New York 1 south 

 through all the Atlantic and Gulf States to eastern Texas and from 

 West Virginia and Ohio southwestward through the Ohio and Missis- 

 sippi Valleys to Missouri, Kansas, 2 and Oklahoma. The tree is dis- 

 tributed over more than 440,000 square miles. This is much larger 

 than the range in the United States of white pine, its nearest com- 

 petitor among the pines. 



Table 1. — Comparative distribution of eight species of pines having the largest ranges 



within the United States} 



Species. 



Area of dis- 

 tribution. 



States rep- 

 resented. 



Sq. miles. 

 440, 000 

 381, 000 

 360, 000 

 350, 000 

 317, 000 

 300, 000 

 295. 000 

 Longleaf pine ! 171, 000 



Shortleaf pine 



White pine 



Pitch pine 



Western yellow pine . 



Scrub pine 



Red pine 



Loblolly pine. 



i Areas derived from Forest Service data on the geographic distribution of pines in the United States, 

 including approximately the exterior boundary of the botanical range. 



From sea level shortleaf pine ranges up to an altitude of about 

 3,000 feet in the southern Appalachians. At or near sea level it 

 covers more than 11 degrees of latitude, or about 800 miles. In the 

 North the species is confined nearly to sea level. It attains its best 

 development at altitudes of 600 to 1,500 feet over the Piedmont and 

 at 400 to 1,000 feet in Arkansas. In both these localities loblolly 

 pine reaches only to altitudes of about 500 to 600 feet, above which 

 shortleaf is the only important southern pine up to 3,000 feet and 

 the only conifer except scattering juniper above about 700 feet in 

 Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. 



The commercial range of shortleaf pine comprises most of the 

 botanical range except that portion lying in the States north of Vir- 

 ginia and in the Ohio River basin. It includes preeminently the 

 broad Piedmont region lying between the Appalachians and the 

 Atlantic coastal plain from Virginia to South Carolina; the northern 

 half of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana; all of Arkansas; 

 eastern Oklahoma; and eastern Texas. Shortleaf pine is the only 

 commercial conifer on moro than 100,000 square miles of upland 



1 Sargent. Herbarium notes, May, 1913. 



2 Britton and Brown. Flora of Northern United States and Canada. Illustrated. 



