2 
PINETUM BRITANNICUM. 
Fig. 10. 
without any spine [figs. 8 and 9]. The seeds [fig. 10] are oblong, pale yellowish, marked with brown, 
about \ an inch long; wingless, the wing being indissolubly adherent to the scale. The kernel is of a 
pleasant flavour, resembling that of Pinus Cembra. According to Gordon, the seed- 
leaves are nine or ten, but mostly nine, in number. 
This tree is distinguished from all other Pines with which we are ac¬ 
quainted, by having only one leaf in the sheath. The leaf has all the appear¬ 
ance of being two leaves agglutinated into one, and has thus deceived 
Endlicher and other botanists, and led them to believe that the species belonged 
to the two-leaved sehlion. On examining the leaf closer, however, and more especially by cutting it across, 
we see that a single mid-rib runs up the centre of the leaf like a pith, shewing beyond doubt that it is 
essentially only one leaf. Loudon in his “ Arboretum,” iv. p. 2158, describes a variety of Pimis sylvestris 
as having only one leaf, and to which Mr Hodgkins, nurseryman, Dunganstown, near Wicklow, who sent 
it to the Horticultural Society’s garden, gave the name of monophylla. This was in 1830. It proved, 
however, to be only an abnormal or monstrous form of the species, the apparently single leaf being two 
distinhl leaves slightly twisted together, and separating readily when taken between the finger and thumb. 
Geographical Distribution. —This tree was found by Fremont extensively spread over the mountains 
of Northern California, from long. iii° to 120° W., and through a considerable range of latitude. It is 
the tree alluded to repeatedly by him in the course of his narrative as the Nut Pine. 
Dr Torrey, in his remarks on P . edulis (“ Mexican Boundary Report,” ii. p. 208), immediately after 
speaking of the synonymy of this species, makes one or two observations as to localities where “ the tree ” is 
found, which we believe apply to this species, the localities of P. edulis being separately given, and not 
extending farther north than New Mexico. He says: “Colonel Fremont found extensive forests of the 
tree in his first expedition, as well as in his journey of 1853-54. Dr Bigelow also found it in Whippler’s 
expedition on the mountains of California, but in consequence of an oversight it was not included in the 
Botanical Report of that expedition.” 
We have received it from the Sierra Nevada, at about the same latitude as Monterey. 
History. —This species was first observed by Colonel Fremont on the Sierra Nevada, in Northern 
California, during his expedition to Oregon and California in 1843. It was described by Dr Torrey 
in the “Botanical Report” appended to Colonel Fremont’s account of the expedition (published in 
1845). His description and figures are clear and characteristic, and should enable any one to 
distinguish it without difficulty. 
Endlicher, two years later, included it in his “ Synopsis Coniferarum,” but, without giving any 
reason for it, altered the name from monophylla to Fremontiana , turning the former into a synonym, 
and further altered the description from the statement that the leaves are solitary, very rarely in pairs, 
and terete (except in the very rare case of being in pairs, when they are semi-cylindrical) to the general 
assertion that the leaves are in pairs , semi-cylindric, very rarely separated , for the most part coalesced 
into a single cylindrical leaf (“ Folia gemina semi-cylindrica, rarissime discreta, plerumque in folium 
unicum cylindricum coalita”), an assertion which, as we have above shewn, is erroneous, in so far as it 
makes the leaves normally in pairs, and semi-cylindric. It seems to us that Endlicher was deceived 
by the appearance of the leaf, and supposed that, although not actually in twos, it was two leaves glued 
together; and that when two did appear in the sheath it was merely that the normal two leaves 
had been liberated from the coalescence. If he had examined the interior of the leaf, and seen that 
it had only one mid-rib, he would have recognised the error of this supposition. When two leaves 
appear, it is an ordinary duplication, and their semi-cylindrical, instead of cylindrical, form is merely 
due to the pressure of the two leaves on each other in the bud while the tissues are soft and 
impressionable. The normal leaf is single and cylindrical, and shews that that is the natural form 
of the Pine leaf, however it may be afterwards altered by contiguity to others in the same sheath. 
Although 
