Pineal gland

“ One of these winter-greens that abounds in our pine-woods is extremely beautiful; it seldom exceeds six inches in height; the leaves are a bright shining green, of a long narrow oval, delicately notched like the edges of a rose-leaf; and the plant emerges from beneath the snow in the early part of the year, as soon as the first thaw takes place, as fresh and verdant as before they were covered up: it seems to be a shy blossomer. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here it is succeeded by the hardy Two-leaved Pine, which is speedily joined by the taller Yellow and Mountain Pines. These, with the burly juniper, and shimmering aspen, rapidly grow larger as the sunshine becomes richer, forming groves that block the view; or they stand more apart here and there in picturesque groups, that make beautiful and obvious harmony with the rocks and with one another. Blooming underbrush becomes abundant,—azalea, spiraea, and the brier-rose weaving fringes for the streams, and shaggy rugs to relieve the stern, unflinching rock-bosses. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Experience with Mexican species has led me to believe that a Pine can adapt itself to various climatic conditions and can modify its growth in response to them. Variations in dimensions of leaf or cone, the number of leaves in the fascicle, the presence of pruinose branchlets, etc., which have been thought to imply specific distinctions, are often the evidence of facile adaptability. In fact such variations, in correlation with climatic variation, may argue, not for specific distinction, but for specific identity. ”

“ The pitch pines are very inspiriting to behold. Their green is as much enlivened and freshened as that of the lichens. It suggests a sort of sunlight on them, though not even a patch of clear sky is to be seen to-day. As dry and olive or slate-colored lichens are of a fresh and living green, so the already green pine needles have acquired a far livelier tint, as if they enjoyed this moisture as much as the lichens do. They seem to be lit up more than when the sun falls on them. ”

“ The pineal, the ghost of a once important third eye at the back of our heads, still harks back in its function to a regulation of our susceptibility to light, and its effect upon sex and brain. So it becomes one of the significant regulators of development, with an indirect hastening or retardation of puberty and maturity according as it works in excess, or too indolently. It appears thus the blood brother of the adrenal cortex which also influences the skin pigment and so susceptibility of the organism to light, brain growth and sex ripening. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A pine needle grown in continuous light differs from one grown under ordinary conditions in the absence of hypodermal fibres, in the absence of the characteristic infoldings of the mesophyll cell-walls, in the smaller size of the resin-canals, &c. The endodermis in Pinus, Picea and many other genera is usually a well-defined layer of cells enclosing the vascular bundles, and separated from them by a tissue consisting in part of ordinary parenchyma and to some extent of isodiametric tracheids ”

“ Old Pine not only received injuries in his early years, but from time to time throughout his life. The somewhat kinked condition of several of the rings of growth, beginning with [Pg 17] the twentieth, shows that at the age of twenty he sustained an injury which resulted in a severe curvature of the spine, and that for some years he was somewhat stooped. I was unable to make out from his diary whether this injury was the result of a tree or some object falling upon him and pinning him down, or whether his back had been overweighted and bent by wet, clinging snow. ”

“ Our common Ground Pine grows low, seldom rising above a hand’s breadth high, shooting forth divers small branches, set with slender, small, long, narrow, greyish, or whitish leaves, somewhat hairy, and divided into three parts, many bushing together at a joint, some growing scatteringly upon the stalks, smelling somewhat strong, like unto rozin: The flowers are small, and of a pale yellow colour, growing from the joint of the stalk all along among the leaves; after which come small and round husks. The root is small and woody, perishing every year. ”

“ But in cultivation the red pine holds its own for its quick growth, its hardiness, its lusty vigor and its beauty of color contrasts. It grows on sterile ground exposed to the sea, forming groves of great beauty where other pines would languish and die. For shelter belts, inland, it is equally dependable, and as specimen trees in parks and gardens it has few equals. At no season of the year does it lose its fresh look of health. Young trees come readily from seed, and throughout their lives they are unusually free from injuries by insects and fungi. ”

“ Along the streams which glide through the prairies, there is a luxuriant growth of noble timber, such as maple, magnolia, blue and green ash, red oak, and cedar, around which climb vines loaded with grapes. Near the sea-shores, the pine, both black and white, becomes exceedingly common, while the smaller plains and hills are covered with that peculiar species of the prickly pear upon which the cochineal insect feeds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Spring-shoots uninodal. Leaves binate, slender, from 15 to 20 cm. long, the hypoderm of uniform thick-walled cells, resin-ducts medial, or with internal or septal ducts, endoderm-cells very unequal in size, some of them large. Conelets unarmed. Cones from 5 to 8 cm. long, peculiarly narrow-cylindrical, symmetrical; apophyses lustrous, rufous brown, radially carinate, the transverse keel prominent.
Of the habit of this Pine I know nothing. As a species it is very clearly defined by its peculiar cone and leaf-section. It grows in the Philippines, Sumatra, Lower Burmah and western Indo-China. ”

“ I was rather surprised to find a great extent of low houses and pits devoted to the growth of the pine, without observing a single fruit amongst the whole stock that was scarcely worth cutting. There cannot be less than one thousand feet in length of houses and pits adapted to the pine-apple, and these varying from eight to twelve feet in width. The principal range was heated by smoke flues, and the plants plunged in saw-dust, with tan under; which practice is frequently adopted in this country, especially when tan is scarce. ”

“ The black pine is another illustration of that curious difference between the old and the young in the same tree. It first appears with two cotyledons, as in any broad-leaved tree, and grows up with a drooping, almost weeping, habit. At this stage it bears scattered leaves of a coppery tint, and was for long regarded as a distinct species, till trees showing both stages of development in the same specimen were found. In sixteen to twenty years the branches begin to grow upright and "spiky," and become covered with dark-green, very narrow leaves. ”

“ 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 pine of forest growth never fails to have a very marked character of its own; the gray shaft rises clear and unbroken by bend or bough, to more than half its great elevation, thence short horizontal limbs in successive fan-like growth surround the trunk to its summit, which is often crowned with a low crest of upright branches. The shaft is very fine from its great height and the noble simplicity of its lines; in coloring, it is a pure clear gray, having the lightest and the smoothest bark of all its tribe, and only occasionally mottled with patches of lichens. ”

“ But for the most part, white pine's our best lay. Pine thrives on soil that stunts oak and twists beech. Our oak isn't good quality, and maple is such an interminably slow grower. In about twenty years from planting, you can make your first, box-board cutting of pine, and every ten years thereafter—"
Arnold had received this avalanche of figures and species with an astonished blink, and now protested energetically that he had had not the slightest intention of precipitating any such flood. ”

“ All the species are of the Western Hemisphere, and among them may be found the biform hypoderm of the leaf, the internal resin-duct, and the total absence of external resin-ducts, characters common in American Hard Pines. The eastern species are quite constant in their characters and present no varietal forms; the western species, on the other hand, are very variable. ”

“ In New York and Pennsylvania a word of distinction is added, and it is called balm of Gilead fir. Toward the southern limit of its range it is spoken of as fir pine and blister pine. New York Indians knew the tree as blisters. They referred to the pockets under the bark of young trees and near the tops of mature trunks, in which resin collected. The name balsam refers to that characteristic also, as does the word balm. In some parts of Canada the tree is known as silver pine, and as silver spruce. The secretion of resin in bark blisters is a characteristic of several firs. ”