40 FAMILIAR TREES 



to eight cones that the tree is said to owe the 

 name Pinaster. Eacli cone is from four to six 

 inches long, and about two inches in its greatest 

 diameter, slightly unsymmetrical in its develop- 

 ment, and changing from a purplish colour, first 

 to green, and then to a polished light yellow- 

 brown. The apophysis, or exposed surface of each 

 scale of the cone, is rhomboidal, with a keel across 

 its wider diagonal, and a small, sharply-pointed, 

 ash-grey pyramid, or " umbo," in the centre. The 

 seeds are oblong, each having a wing, with which 

 it is nearly two inches long and three-quarters 

 of an inch across. 



Though its timber is of but secondary import- 

 ance, the Cluster Pine is by far the most valuable 

 species of its genus in southern Europe. This is 

 owing to the way in which it binds together 

 shifting sands with its roots and breaks the force 

 of wind and rain, and also to its resinous products. 

 The extensive and highly successful sowing of this 

 species on the shifting dunes between the Adour 

 and the Gironde has earned for this Pine — not there 

 indigenous — the names of "Pin do Bordeaux" and 

 " Pin des Landes." 



SECTION OF NEEDLE LEAF OF CLUSTER PINE, HIGHLY MAGNIFIED. 



