Pinus

“ Thirty-nine of the seventy known species of pine are found in the United States. These with their woods are separated into two groups known as hard and soft pines. The Dantzic or Northern pine (Pinus silvestris) is the principal European species. [p131]
FOOTNOTE
[72] The roots of most species die with cutting of trees. There is no power of producing new shoots. (The pitch pine (Pinus rigida) is an exception to this rule.) Seeds also have short-lived vitality. Trees are easily raised from fresh seeds. ”

“ The pine-tree is generally chosen as the subject for the operating knife, and is cut and trained into all manner of shapes; an umbrella made of a single tree of Pinus densiflora trained on a framework of light bamboo, or a junk of perfect form, the reward of years of patience, will be waiting until it is required to be the chief feature in a landscape garden. ”

“ There are pines whose seeds are eatable in other parts of the world, as well as in the Himalaya Mountains,—for instance, the Pinus cembra of Europe, the ‘ghik’ of Japan, the ‘Lambert’ pine of California, and several species in New Mexico, known among the people as ‘piñon’ trees. So you perceive that besides their valuable timber—to say nothing of their pitch, turpentine, and resin—the family of the pines also furnishes food to the human race. ”

“ The lodge-pole pine (Pinus contorta, var. Murrayana) lives an adventurous frontier life, and of the six hundred kinds of North American trees no other has so many pioneer characteristics. This species strikingly exhibits some of the necessary requisites in trees that extend or maintain the forest-frontier. The characteristics which so largely contribute to its success and enable it to succeed through the agency of fire are its seed-hoarding habit and the ability of its seedling to thrive best in recently fire-cleaned earth, in the full glare of the sun. ”

“ FIR-TREE, the name of several species of the Pinus, or pine-tree, of which the following are the principal:
1. The sylvestris, or Scotch fir, which is a native of Scotland, and flourishes best in a poor sandy soil, especially if it be mixed with loam: on rocks or bogs it seldom attains a large size; if planted in a black soil, it becomes diseased ”

“ Pinus australis, or long-leaved pine, an invaluable tree, called yellow pine, pitch pine, and broom pine where it grows; in the North, Southern pine and red pine; in England, Georgia pitch pine. First appears at Norfolk, Virginia; thence stretches six hundred miles southwest. Sixty or seventy feet high, by fifteen to eighteen inches; leaves a foot long, three in a sheath; negroes use them for brooms. Being stronger, more compact and durable, because the resin is equally distributed, and also fine-grained and susceptible of a bright polish, it is preferred to every other pine. ”

“ Pinus ponderosa is extremely variable, and much bother it gives botanists who try to catch and confine the unmanageable proteus in two or a dozen species,—Jeffreyi, deflexa, Apacheca latifolia, etc. But in all its wanderings, in every form, it manifests noble strength. ”

“ The genus Pinus serves as an illustration of wood of a distinct type characterized by the absence of xylem-parenchyma, except such as is associated with the numerous resin-canals that occur abundantly in the wood, cortex and medullary rays; the medullary rays are composed of parenchyma and of horizontal tracheids with irregular ingrowths from their walls. In a radial section of a pine stem each ray is seen to consist in the median part of a few rows of parenchymatous cells with large oval simple pits in their walls, accompanied above and below by horizontal tracheids with bordered pits. ”

“ But the pine is more especially the tree of a northern sylva. As you approach the Arctic circle, it becomes the characteristic tree. There it appears in extensive forests, lending their picturesque shelter to the snowy desolation of the earth. One species of pine is the very last tree that disappears as the traveller, in approaching the pole, takes his leave of the limits of vegetation. This species is the “white spruce” (Pinus alba) , the very one which, along with the birch-tree, had been pointed out by Norman to his companions. ”

“ Pinus attenuata is a small, slender, arrowy tree, with pale green leaves in threes, clustered flowers half an inch long, brownish yellow and crimson, and cones whorled in conspicuous clusters around the branches and also around the trunk. The cones never fall off or open until the tree dies. They are about four inches long, exceedingly strong and solid, and varnished with hard resin forming a waterproof and almost worm and squirrel proof package, in which the seeds are kept fresh and safe during the lifetime of the tree. ”

“ The cause of the bewildering host of varietal forms, connecting widely contrasted extremes, seems to lie in the facile adaptability of those Pines, which are able to spread from the tropical base of a mountain to a less or greater distance toward its snow-capped summit. ”

“ The Pines are confined to the northern hemisphere, but grow in all climates and under all conditions of soil, temperature and humidity where trees can grow. Some of the species are of very restricted range, but others are adaptable and can cover wide areas. ”

“ PINUS BALFOURIANA 1853 P. Balfouriana Balfour in Bot. Exp. Oregon, 1, f.
Spring-shoots somewhat puberulent. Leaves from 2 to 4 cm. long, persistent for many years; stomata ventral only; resin-ducts external. Scales of the conelet short-mucronate. Cones from 7 to 12 cm. long, tapering to a rounded apex, short-pedunculate; apophyses dark terracotta-brown, tumid, the umbo bearing a short recumbent prickle; seed with a long adnate wing.
44
An alpine species growing often at the timber-limit. ”

“ The wood-strands, forming the axis of the cone, differ in tenacity in the two sections of the genus. Those of the Soft Pines are easily pulled apart by the fingers, those of the Hard Pines are tougher in various degrees and cannot be torn apart without the aid of a tool. ”

“ The cone of this species always retains its peculiar character. The variations are mainly in the number of leaves in the fascicle. On this character this Nut Pine is divided by many authors into four species—cembroides, with three slender leaves—edulis, with two stout leaves—monophylla, with one leaf and—Parryana, with four stout leaves. ”

“ Spring-shoots uninodal. Leaves in fascicles of 3, the sheath persistent, from 20 to 30 cm. long; resin-ducts external, the hypoderm often in large masses, some or all of the endoderm cells with thick outer walls. Cones from 10 to 17 cm. long, short-pedunculate, ovoid-conic; apophyses lustrous brown-ochre or fuscous brown, elevated into thick, often reflexed, beaks with obtuse mutic umbos; seeds with large nuts and adnate striated dark gray or fuscous brown wings.
48
Of the three Pines of the Himalayas this species is the most important. ”

“ But, after all, it is the trees that have been planted by Nature that give the greatest pleasure apart from commercial considerations—the lonely Pine, that grows in rugged grandeur on the edge of the escarpment where its seed was planted in the crevice by the wind; the Oak that grows outside the forest, where a squirrel or a jay dropped the acorn, and where the young tree had room all its life to throw out its arms as it would; the little cluster of Birches that springs from the ferns and moss of the hillside. ”

“ Mark the tall pine which has grown from a small seed which sent forth its root downwards and its trunk upwards, drawing nourishment from earth, air, and water, till it now waves its top to the passing breeze, a hundred feet above this dirty earth: or the oak or olive, which have maintained their respective positions a dozen centuries despite the operations of wind and weather, and have shed their foliage and their seeds to propagate their species and extend their kinds to different places. ”

“ These are the young trees of the long-leaved or Southern yellow pine. How beautiful they are, these narrow leaves of vivid green, more than a foot long, drooping gracefully from the center outward, with none of the stiffness of our Northern species! In some places they seem to fairly bubble in green from all the surface of the ground, so close are they. And the grand long-leaved pine itself, maintained in lusty vigor above these greeneries, is a tree of simple dignity, emphasized strongly when seen at its best either in the uncut forest, or in a planted avenue. ”

“ Many varieties of the red, yellow, and pitch pine, intermingled with the graceful larch, the picturesque beech and maple, birch, elm, oak, and numerous other tribes of forest timber, grow down close to the water’s side, spreading in stately grandeur over the broad plains, or stretching proudly up to the summits of the mountains that descend precipitously to the river. In summer the bright and cheerful green of the forests is exceedingly beautiful and refreshing to the eye, the dark pines alone forming a sombre contrast to the vivid freshness of the deciduous trees ”

“ A white bark pine will climb where the weight of the winter drifts is so heavy that it is never able to lift its decumbent trunk from the ground, clinging like ivy to the wall in which it roots.
In the Spring the rich florescence of the conifers sheds pollen in drifts that, carried down the melting water, warn the sheep-herder and the orchardist a hundred miles away of the advancing season. [158] A pine forest in flower is one of the things worth seeing which is most seldom seen, for at its best the high passes are still choked by snow, the lakes ice-locked, the trails dangerous. ”

“ The coniferous pines are represented by several species; among which are the sugar, black, silver and yel- low pine. The white, lovely, yellow and red fir, the hemlock, spruce, larch, yew, cypress, yellow and red cedar are in great numbers. Many and indeed most of these trees are exceedingly valuable to the uses of man. ”

“ It is an open cleared space, that mound beneath the pine-tree; a few low shrubs and seedling pines, with the slender waving branches of the late-flowering pearly tinted asters, the elegant fringed gentian, with open bells of azure blue, the last and loveliest of the fall flowers and winter-greens, brighten the ground with wreaths of shining leaves and red berries. ”

“ In winter, when the snow is deep, the cones of the mountain pines are empty, and the juniper, hemlock, and dwarf pine orchard buried, he comes down to glean seeds in the yellow pine forests, startling the grouse with his loud screams. ”

“ Scarcely a specimen of any other tree is to be found associated with the pine. But there are some thickets of the little saw palmettos and a magnificent assemblage of tall grasses, their splendid panicles waving grandly in the warm wind, and making low tuneful changes in the glistening light that is flashed from their bent stems.
Not a pine, not a palm, in all this garden excels these stately grass plants in beauty of wind-waving gestures. Here are panicles that are one mass of refined purple; others that have flowers as yellow as ripe oranges, and stems polished and shining like steel wire. ”

“ I have oftentimes feasted on the beauty of these noble trees when they were towering in all their winter grandeur, laden with snow—one mass of bloom; in summer, too, when the brown, staminate clusters hang thick among the shimmering needles, and the big purple burs are ripening in the mellow light; but it is during cloudless wind-storms that these colossal pines are most impressively beautiful. Then they bow like willows, their leaves streaming forward all in one direction, and, when the sun shines upon them at the required angle, entire groves glow as if every leaf were burnished silver. ”

“ When you cut down an oak wood, a pine wood will not at once spring up there unless there are, or have been quite recently, seed-bearing pines near enough for the seeds to be blown from them. But, adjacent to a forest of pines, if you prevent other crops from growing there, you will surely have an extension of your pine forest, provided the soil is suitable. ”

“ Again the forest pageant changes. There are groves of pine stricken with hoary age, bearded like patriarchs with long, pendent streamers of colourless moss;285 then comes a young growth of pine, fore-doomed to early death which already shows in the bronze of premature decay. It is a beautiful spot, nevertheless, balsam-sweet and strewn with needles that nurture violets of yellow and purple, twin flowers and Queen's Cups. ”

“ But the winds go to every tree, fingering every leaf and branch and furrowed hole; not one is forgotten: the Mountain Pine towering with outstretched arms on the rugged buttresses of the icy peaks, the lowliest and most retiring tenant of the dells—they seek and find them all, caressing them tenderly, bending them in lusty exercise, stimulating their growth, plucking off a leaf or limb as required, or removing an entire tree or grove, now whispering and cooing through the branches like a sleepy child, now roaring like the ocean ”

“ The impression on most people's minds must have been received more from pictures than reality, so far as I can judge, so ragged they think the pine; whereas its chief character in health is green and full roundness. It stands compact, like one of its own cones, slightly curved on its sides, finished and quaint as a carved tree in some Elizabethan garden; and instead of being wild in expression, forms the softest of all forest scenery, for other trees show their trunks and twisting boughs; but the pine, growing either in luxuriant mass, or in happy isolation, allows no branch to be seen. ”

“ It is thrilling business to bring those giant Pines down. The ground trembles under the stroke, while the reverberating echo of its fall, as it rings through mountains and valleys, may, on a still morning, be heard six or eight miles. Before felling the Pine, small trees are cut for bed-pieces, the Pine-tree falling across them transversely, to prevent it from becoming too deeply imbedded in the snow. ”