52 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
part they are linear, needle-like or awl-shaped and stiff, as in 
the true pines, in which they vary, in different species, from two 
or three to twelve and even eighteen inches in length, in bun- 
dies of from two to six in a bundle. In the firs and spruces 
they are shorter, and flat or prismatic; still more so in the juni- 
per and the yew; and in the cedar and cypress they are reduced 
to little more than pointed scales.* Allof this family may be 
considered as destitute of stipules; the apparent stipules some- 
times seen on the shoots from the stump of the pitch pine, being 
in reality solitary leaves, with bundles of leaves springing from 
their axils. 
The buds exhibit a great variety of structure. Often they 
are naked, as in the juniper and arbor vite, the apparent scales 
taking, as they expand, the form of true leaves. Sometimes, 
as in the several species of pine, they are covered by scales 
totally different from leaves. 'They are sometimes, as in the 
fir, enveloped by resin; sometimes free from it. They usually, 
as in the pines, proceed only from the extremity of the trunk or 
branches, and contain the annual addition to the stem, and the 
whorl of branches. 
With very few exceptions, the pines are moncecious, the male 
and female flowers being in different parts of the same plant, 
both usually disposed in cones or catkins, but totally unlike in 
structure. The male flowers consist of one or more stamens 
usually attached, with or without a stalk, to a scale, which, 
however, is sometimes wanting. The catkins of the male flow- 
ers are far more numerous than the cones of the female flowers. 
The yellow pollen, which is very abundant, often falls in such 
quantities upon the branches and leaves below, and upon the 
neighboring plants, as to cover them; and being as light and 
fine as dust, it has been sometimes carried by the wind from a 
forest of pines and spread upon the ground ata distance. This 
affords a probable ex planation of the stories which have been told, 
* In some of the foreign genera, they are broader and lanceolate, as in podocar- 
pus ; whilst in a few, as the agathis and ginkgo, they expand into a resemblance to 
the leaves of other dicotyledonous vegetables. In the remote genera callitris and 
ephedra, they are so small, scale-hke and distant, as to give the plant the appear- 
ance of being destitute of leaves. 
