LONG-LEAVED PINE. 
79 
sissippi, and because the names of Yellow Pine and Pitch Pine, which are 
more commonly employed, serve in the Middle States to designate two 
species entirely distinct and extensively diffused. The specific epithet 
australis is more appropriate than that of palustris, which has hitherto 
been applied to it by botanists, but which suggests an erroneous idea of 
the situations in which it grows. 
Toward the north, the Long-leaved Pine first makes its appearance near 
Norfolk, in Virginia, where the pine-barrens begin. It seems to be espe- 
cially assigned to dry, sandy soils, and it is found almost without interrup- 
tion in the, lower part of the Carolinas, Georgia and the Floridas, over a 
tract more than 600 miles long from north-east to south-west, and more than 
100 miles broad from the sea toward the mountains of the Carolinas and 
Georgia. I have ascertained three points, about 100 miles apart, where 
it does not grow : the first, 8 miles from the river Neuse, in North Carolina, 
on the road from Louisburgh to Raleigh ; the second, between Chester and 
Winesborough, in South Carolina ; the third, 12 miles north of Augusta, in 
Georgia. Where it begins to show itself towards the river Neuse, it is 
united with the Loblolly Pine, the Yellow Pine, the Pond Pine, the Black 
Jack Oak and the Scrub Oak ; but immediately beyond Raleigh it holds 
almost exclusive possession of the soil, and is seen in company-with the 
Pines just mentioned only on the edges of the swamps enclosed in the 
barrens ; even there not more than one stock in a hundred is of another 
species. With this exception, the Long-leaved Pine forms the unbroken 
mass of woods which covers this extensive country. But between Fayette- 
ville and Wilmington, in North Carolina, the Scrub Oak is found in some 
districts disseminated in the barrens, and, except this species of Pine, it is 
the only tree capable of subsisting in so dry and sterile a soil. 
The mean stature of the Long-leaved Pine is 60 or 70 feet, with an uni- 
form diameter of 15 or 18 inches for two-thirds of this height. Some stocks, 
favored by local circumstances, attain much larger dimensions, particularly 
in East Florida. The bark is somewhat furrowed, and the epidermis de- 
taches itself in thin transparent sheets. The leaves are about a foot long, 
of a beautiful brilliant green, united to the number of three in the same 
sheath, and collected in bunches at the extremity of the branches : they 
are longer and more numerous on the young stocks, which are sometimes 
cut by the negroes for brooms. The buds are very large, white, fringed, 
and not resinous. 
The bloom takes place in April ; the male flowers form masses of diver- 
gent violet-colored aments about 2 inches long; in drying they shed great 
quantities of yellowish pollen, which is diffused by the wind and forms a 
momentary covering on the surface of the land and water. The cones are 
very large, being 7 or 8 inches long, and four inches thick when open, and 
are armed with small retorted spines. In the fruitful year they are ripe 
