Ee isOiLny PN 
Pinus taeda Linnaeus 
We ate so apt to consider the various kinds of pine trees as similar 
and uninteresting, that when a loblolly pine is investigated in its 
blooming season in earliest spring, its curious flowers shedding their 
clouds of dustlike pollen are an unexpected novelty. Produced plen- 
tifully at the tips of the twigs, they are so abundant, as to give a 
brownish tinge to the whole tree. The embryonic cones ate inconspic- 
uous at this season, reaching their full size only at the end of autumn, 
but they enlarge after pollination has occurred. Loblolly pine is a large 
forest tree occasionally reaching a height of one hundred and fifty 
feet, with a trunk five feet in diameter. It springs up in clearings or in 
old fields and 1s often called oldfield pine. The long leaves are usually 
in threes. The wood 1s coarse-grained and brittle. 
Loblolly pine ranges from Florida north to Delaware and New 
Jersey and west to Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. 
The sketch was made at Beaufort, South Carolina. 
PLATE 335 
