LIFE HISTORY OF SHORTLEAF PINE. 
37 
the tree just below the surface of the ground, causing butt rot; and 
one enters through branch stubs, knot holes, or other openings 
through the living sapwood in the upper portion of the tree, pro- 
ducing the true redheart. This disease is probably the most usual 
and is caused by Trametes pint. It travels downward and sometimes 
reaches to the base of the tree, leaving the wood firm rather than pow- 
dery, of a rich or dark reddish color, and permeated by oval or lens- 
shaped pockets of a light-gray color. The well-known dark-colored 
"punks," or fruiting bodies, are almost invariably from this species, 
since the other two common fungi have annual fruiting bodies. 
The Polyporus schweinitzii leaves the wood in characteristic brown- 
colored cubical blocks. The fruiting bodies are hairy on top, brown 
inside, and weather brown. They are short-lived and are seldom 
seen. The sporophore or "punk" of Polyporus sulphur eus is yellow 
on the outside changing to white, and its contents is white. Its 
work may be known by characteristic white bands of mycelium, 
which radiate outward from the center of the tree, filling the cracks 
in the rotted wood with felt-like masses of fungous tissue. 
In cutting stands up to 70 years old heart rot is found infrequently. 
The liability to infection increases with the declining vitality of the 
tree. In one representative even-aged forest stand, 60 to 65, years in 
central Arkansas, only 2.2 per cent of the logs showed injury by fungi. 
In four large even-aged groups of shortleaf pine, 170 years old, the 
diseased logs ranged from 20 to 27 per cent of the total number of logs 
utilized, or 17.4 per cent of all logs, including sound logs left in the 
tops, which are merchantable or will be soon. A record of the in- 
fected logs in virgin timber at a large sawmill in Pike County, Ark., 
for March, April, and May, 1912, showed 25,689 sound logs and 4,430, 
or 14.7 per cent of the total logs, unsound. The log scale was slightly 
more than 3 \ million board feet. The average run of infected timber 
for central Arkansas is further indicated in Table 14. 
Table 14. — Amount of "redheart" infection in average forest run shortleaf pine, mostly 
60 to 180 years old. 1 
Date. 
1912. 
June 
July 
August 
September. 
October — 
November. 
December. 
January.. 
February. 
March 
April 
May 
1913. 
Total 15, 511, 545 1, 745, 789 
Total cut 
for month. 
Board feet. 
1,907,461 
1,741,235 
1, 597, 014 
1,862,025 
1, 185, 132 
1,087,018 
1,008,959 
1, 147, 115 
754,610 
1,048,638 
994, 102 
1,178,236 
Redheart 
defect. 
Board feet. 
232, 685 
203, 769 
259, 639 
155, 513 
143, 307 
119,339 
87, 027 
128,436 
85, 723 
118, 692 
100, 662 
110,996 
Percentage 
sound. 
91 
S'J 
Percentage 
infected 
with 
redheart. 
1 Includes both butt rot and true redheart. Tally for a large representative mill in Clark County, Ark. 
