74 
WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND TREES. 
contact with the pollen grain. After fertilization the carpel en- 
larges to protect the seed, and becomes fleshy or woody, in the 
latter case a group of carpels forming the well-known cones of 
Pine or Fir. 
In some of the groups (as the Yew, for example) the male or 
pollen-producing flowers are borne by a separate tree from that 
which bears the female or cone-producing flowers. In the Pines 
both sexes are found on the same tree ; but throughout the order 
the pollen is carried by the wind. All the species are trees or 
shrubs. They are among the most valuable of timber trees, and, 
in addition, yield a number of useful substances, such as pitch, 
tar, turpentine, etc. The leaves are always rigid, extremely 
narrow, and long in proportion : usually of the form that botanists 
term linear, with the two sides parallel. In the Yews these leaves 
spread out in two rows from opposite sides of the twigs ; in the 
Pines they are in clusters of two, three, or five, seeming to 
be bound together at the base by a wisp of thin skin. The 
number of leaves in each bundle is often a help in distinguishing 
species. 
The Yew ( Taxus baccata) lacks the graceful proportions of 
most of our trees, but it has for compensation a most obvious air 
of strength and endurance. Who doubts, as he gazes at some 
sombre Yew in the old churchyard, the story of the local 
antiquarian, who tells him the tree has so stood for 2000 years. He 
may, perhaps, mildly suggest that neither the church nor the 
churchyard was in existence so far back, but even then the 
antiquarian will probably have the last word by suggesting that 
the grove of Yews of which this formed part was the church of 
the past. Thousands see in cathedral aisles the reproduction in 
stone of the pine-forest or the beech-wood. Standing before an 
ancient Yew they may see whence came the idea for those 
clustered columns. They actually exist in the bole of the Yew, 
which presents the appearance not of a single trunk, but of 
several trunks that have coalesced. This condition is due to the 
