64 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



chary dispenser of seed, prudently shedding out upon arid 

 and restless sands, at long intervals, only after prolonged 

 consecutive hot and dry days, such rarely occur only once in 

 ten years or so. 



The best shelter-pine on the coast, ever battling for its 

 own and others' freedom, singing heroic songs to the tem- 

 pest, or tuned and timed to softer lullaby a, echoing the 

 shore — anon sighing some celestial love song that u sweetly 

 dies along the gale." The long and early buds of Spring 

 coated, as it were, with thinned white lead are likely to 

 attract attention and are really ornamental. 



BISHOP'S PINE. 



(Pinus murieata). 



" the purple mountains bore 



Greetings to the sunset shore — 



Father guide me! day declines! 



Hollow winds are in the pines." — Hemans. 



MOSTLY a middle-sized pine of fifty to one hundred or 

 more feet high, two to three feet through, bark reddish 

 brown and rough, open and free spreading branches 

 in due shelter, more retracted and dense when exposed. 

 Leaves two in each sheath or boot, four to five inches long, 

 strongly saw-toothed ; the boot from being half an inch long, is 

 at length, reduced to barely one twelfth ; male flowers in short 

 oblong or oval spikes, an inch or so long, outer and inner in- 

 volving scales, six to eight, of equal length ; cones set close 

 down in clusters of three to seven, these are apt to continue 

 closed for several years, until a long spell of hot and dry 

 weather supervenes, say, usually, once in ten years, when they 

 open and shed a large amount of seed. The form of these 

 cones is obliquely egg-shaped and pointed, usually about three 

 inches long by about two broad. At first, cinnamon color; 

 later, chestnut brown, and in great age gray-bleached. The 

 prickles of the scales from the tops of more or less thick- 

 ened acute points, often quite elongated into straitish or 

 incurved spurs, these becoming more swelled on the outer 

 base when much exposed to bleak northwest winds. Seed 

 grooved, rough, and black ; wings half to three fourths of an 

 inch long; widest above the middle. 



Distinguished from the Knobby Pine by having only two 

 leaf-straws in a boot ; cones much smaller and very much 

 shorter. They both have close persistent cones, which re- 

 main on from twenty to thirty years. 



