THE CLUSTER PINE 39 



iieiglit of forty to 'eighty feet. Strictly a native of 

 the shores of the Mediterranean, .and flourishing 

 only in sandy soils, no species' of the genus has 

 been more widely ' disseminated artificially ; and, 

 after . having been introduced into China, Japan; 

 Australia, New Zealand, and Northern India, it has 

 been reintroduced from those countries as if it were 

 a new species. Introduced into England by Gerard 

 in 1596, it has been extensively planted, especially 

 at Westwick, Norfolk, where planting was - carried 

 on throughout the eighteenth century, in a bleak 

 situation, on sandy heath land. It is readily 

 distinguished from other Pines by the large 

 clustered ihasses of long, light-green leaves at the 

 ends of the shoots, alternating with lengths of 

 branch Avhich are bare of leaves. The trunk from 

 an early age is covered with a coarse bark deeply 

 fissured into narrow longitudinal ridges, and the 

 slender, regularly whorled branches invariably bend 

 upward at their extremities. The buds are without 

 any resinous exudation, and covered with whitish- 

 brown reflexed scales, fringed with woolly hairs. 

 The leaves are six to twelve inches long, thick, 

 fleshy, and rigid, with a finely toothed margin and 

 an acute point. They are almost grass-green in 

 colour, with faint white lines of stomata on both 

 surfaces. 



The staminate flowers, which in the south of 

 England are generally produced early in June, are 

 of a fawn-yellow colour, about an inch long, and 

 arranged in a loose spike four to six inches long. 

 It is, however, to the star-like clusters of from lour 



