[90] 



PINE. 



Family: THE CONIFERS. [Translator's note: now PINACEAE] 

 Reproductive system: MONOECY, MONADELPHY. 



Pine trees by nature live in the mountains. They like high cold regions and rarely 

 are found in warm countries. They grow among rocks and at the edges of cliffs. Their 

 dark green foliage often adds to the ruggedness and solitude of the places where nature 

 has put them. It's in these wild, often inaccessible spots that pine trees lift their venerable 

 treetops to the sky and then simply die of old age because an ax never has been able to 

 reach them. Plantations of pine trees occasionally seen in open country almost alw ays are 

 at the seashore where the air is more brisk and pure. Pines generally prefer loose, sandy 

 soil. There are few trees more useful than the pine. During their lifetime they embellish 

 parks and large gardens with their evergreen foliage and picturesque forms. They provide 

 resin, tar, lampblack, edible fruit, and bark that's used to make a kind of bread. When cut 

 they provide valuable material for civil construction and shipbuilding. 



The Scotch pine, Finns sylvestris, MILL., is one of the largest trees in our forests 

 [Translator's note: Scotch pine currently is a general name for the Pirns sylvestris 

 species]. When it grows in a grove, the trunk is straight and bare. When solitary it has 

 branches from the base up. However it's variable in height, and in some inferior soils it's 

 stunted and not very tall. The red, or Scotch pine is a distinct variety of the species. So 

 too is the one from Riga whose trunk provides the fine masts that we get from the 

 northern countries, which gives the tree the name 



