Pine knot

“ Some of our people, who were too lazy to search for knots, split the wood into small sticks, each about the size of a goose quill, and, standing three or four in a vessel filled with sand, gained as much in the way of light as might be had from one pine knot. ”

“ The texture as well as the grain of wood is modified by the presence of a branch. The wood in and around a knot is much harder than the main body of the trunk on account of the crowding together of the elements. Knots are the remnants of branches left in the trunk. These once had all the parts of the trunk itself, namely bark, cambium, wood, and pith. Normally, branches grow from the pith, tho some trees, as Jack pine and redwood, among the conifers, and most of the broad-leaf trees have the power of putting out at any time adventitious buds which may develop into branches. ”

“ Higginson, writing in 1633, said of these pine-knots:—
"They are such candles as the Indians commonly use, having no other, and they are nothing else but the wood of the pine tree, cloven in two little slices, something thin, which are so full of the moysture of turpentine and pitch that they burne as cleere as a torch." ”

“ The plant grows rich from the constant tribute of the winds. The soil-bed grows deeper and richer and is also constantly outbuilding and enlarging, and Kinnikinick steadily increases its size.
In a few years a small oasis is formed in, or rather on, the barren. This becomes a place of refuge for seed wanderers,—in fact, a nursery. Up the slope I saw a young pine standing in a kinnikinick snow-cover. In the edge of the snow-tuft by me, covered with a robe of snow, I found a tiny tree, a mere baby pine. Where did this pine come from? There were no seed-bearing pines within miles. ”

“ The nut-pine, Pinus edulis, scattered along the upper slopes and roofs of the cañon buildings, is the principal tree of the strange Dwarf Cocanini Forest. It is a picturesque stub of a pine about twenty-five feet high, usually-with dead, lichened limbs thrust through its rounded head, and grows on crags and fissured rock tables, braving heat and frost, snow and drought, and continues patiently, faithfully fruitful for centuries. Indians and insects and almost every desert bird and beast come to it to be fed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The handsomest of our pitch pines is the red pine, whose dark green leaves are six inches long, and cluster in twos upon the twigs. The bark, the wood, and the bud scales are all red. The cones are from one to three inches long, with thickened scales which have no spines. The tree grows into a broad pyramid, branched to the ground, with stout twigs, and luxuriant foliage. The symmetry and vigour of growth makes this red pine a handsomer tree than the ragged, discouraged-looking pitch pines. It is well for the landscape that its wood is very disappointing. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Nothing can be more cheerful in scenery than the occasional groups of Pines which have come up spontaneously on the bald hills near our coast, elsewhere a dreary waste of gray rocks, stunted shrubbery, and prostrate Juniper. In the forest the White Pine constitutes the very sanctuary of Nature, its tall pillars extending into the clouds, and its broad canopy of foliage mixing with the vapors that descend in the storm. ”

“ In its eyes everything is both good and bad; and for my own part, I sometimes wonder whether this may not be the sum of all wisdom,—to find everything good in its place, and everything bad out of its place.
Thoughts like these suggest themselves as I look at the pitch-pine, which, to speak only of such trees as grow within the range of my own observation, is the one irregular member of the family of cone-bearers. The white or Weymouth pine, the hemlock, the cedars, the spruces, the fir, and the larch, these are all, in different ways, of a decidedly symmetrical turn. ”

“ Of pines, the white spruce is the most common here: the red and black spruce, the balsam of Gilead fir, and Banksian pine, also occur frequently. The larch is found only in swampy spots, and is stunted and unhealthy. The canoe birch attains a considerable size in this latitude, but from the great demand for its wood to make sledges, it has become rare. The alder abounds on the margin of the little grassy lakes, so common in the neighbourhood. [Pg 136] A decoction of its inner bark is used as an emetic by the Indians, who also extract from it a yellow dye. ”

“ So that the more knotted and gnarled a log of mahogany is, the better. It makes the more beautiful wood. But in pine, it is not beauty, but facility of working, which is the great object. So [Pg 75] they always want to get pine as smooth and straight-grained as possible. So that one of these trees that grow detached, in the fields, would not be of much value for lumber. It has so many branches, that the boards made from it would be full of knots."
"That is the reason, I suppose," said Marco, "why they don't cut them down, and make them into boards."
"Perhaps it is," replied Forester. ”

“ Even as decades pass its limbs still remain numerous and though there is abundant wood in the half century old pasture pine it is of little use for lumber, for the limbs, young and old, have filled its trunk with knots. Where our present day trees have seeded in thickly and uniformly over considerable space it is different. Then as the trees grow old they grow taller, each struggling to outdo its neighbors and get more light and air. Lower limbs decay in time and in the progress of forty or fifty years we get a "second growth" pine which is fairly limbless for a height of forty or fifty feet. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The resin followed a notch and dripped into an expressly hollowed-out bowl in the ground between the pine roots.
All of this massacre for the resin, for the few drachmas that the Yeusois would put into their haversack if they sold it.
The stripped pines die in a short time. They're blown down by the first gust of wind or they dry up because they have no more sap.
They understand their end is near, but nevertheless they sing; they sway and rustle like the others, the healthy pines. ”

“ The little shoots fork out on each side of the big branches, and like them are set closely with leaves. These shoots do not point up to the sky nor down to the earth; they spread out flat, so that the branch looks like a huge fern.
Pines begin to grow like firs; but as they shoot up side by side in the woods, their lower branches drop off for want of air and sunshine, and their upper branches spread out wider. A fir is a pyramid with a pointed top; but a full-grown pine has a flat top, and often a tall, bare trunk, so that it looks like a great umbrella. ”

“ The pines of the United States include many species, most of which are valuable for their timber. The White Pine, which attains a great height and favors sandy soil, heads the list. Its bark is smoother than any other pine and its cones are long and slender. Its wood is soft, compact, and valuable. The wood of the Yellow Pine is hard and heavy, darker in tone, and much favored for flooring. It does not grow to such a height as the white pine; it is found throughout the Southern states. The Red Pine, or Norway Pine, favors Canada more than our country. ”

“ There is something of awe in the thought of a [Pg 39] bird nestling close beneath a snow-laden bush in a broad meadow, or clinging fast to a limb in the swaying top of some tall tree, rocked in its great arms through the night by a winter gale. All trees, even the pines and cedars, are fearfully exposed sleeping-places, and death from cold is not infrequent among the birds that take beds in them.
The pine barrens, and especially certain pine clumps along Cohansey Creek and at the head of Cubby Hollow, used to be famous crow-roosts. ”

“ Left to themselves they have been flying away ever since September, a few at a time on dry, windy days when their single wings would scull them farthest. One might impute instinct or whatever it is to the pine tree too, she works so methodically for the preservation of her species. A year ago last spring the mother pine put forth the beginnings of those pine cones that now dangle brown and pitchy, or drop to the ground, useless except as kindlings for my campfire. ”

“ It should be premised that the old, dry Black-knot remains on the tree for many years, and that the place to look for the new Black-knot is on such trees as have been already attacked and are loaded with old Black-knot, without being as yet completely killed by it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In sheltered lake-hollows, on beds of alluvium, this pine varies so far from the common form that frequently it could be taken for a distinct species, growing in damp sods like grasses from forty to eighty feet high, bending all together to the breeze and whirling in eddying gusts more lively than any other tree in the woods. I frequently found specimens fifty feet high less than five inches in diameter. Being so slender and at the same time clad with leafy boughs, it is often bent and weighed down to the ground when laden with soft snow ”

“ The Canadian pine, variously termed white or yellow, is not a strong wood, but is much used by engineers for making patterns or models, on account of its smoothness of surface, its non-liability to warp, its comparative freedom from knots, and the facility with which it can be cut. The white or yellow pine is not nearly so strong or so stiff as oak, yet sometimes it is almost equal to it in its tenacity and toughness. In such a large family as that of the resinous firs and pines, there is almost an equal variation in their strength, toughness, and rigidity. ”

“ It is not, in fact, surprising that the pine should be often undermined; it shoots its fibres in such a horizontal direction, merely on the surface of the earth, requiring only enough to cover those that cling to the crags. Nothing proves to me so clearly that it is the air which principally nourishes trees and plants as the flourishing appearance of these pines. The firs, demanding a deeper soil, are seldom seen in equal health, or so numerous on the barren cliffs. They take shelter in the crevices, or where, after some revolving ages, the pines have prepared them a footing. ”

“ Wherever the young trees are at all sheltered, they grow up straight and arrowy, with delicately tapered bole, and ascending branches terminated with glossy, bottle-brush tassels. At middle age, certain limbs are specialized and pushed far out for the bearing of cones, after the manner of the Sugar Pine; and in old age these branches droop and cast about in every direction, giving rise to very picturesque effects. The trunk becomes deep brown and rough, like that of the Mountain Pine, while the young cones are of a strange, dull, blackish-blue color, clustered on the upper branches. ”

“ And in general, wherever one chops or cuts part of the stem or bough, a knot is formed, as though one thing were made thereby into two and a fresh growing point produced, the cause being the mutilation or some other such reason; for the effect of such a blow cannot of course be ascribed to nature.
Again in all trees the branches always seem to have more knots, because the intermediate parts [15] have not yet developed, just as the newly formed branches of the fig are the roughest, [16] and in the vine the highest [17] shoots. ”