A tree, usually 40°—50° or occasionally 70°—80° high, with a short trunk sometimes 3° but generally not more than 2° in diameter, stout often contorted branches more or less pendulous at the extremities, forming an open round-topped head, and slender branchlets dark green when they first appear, becoming dark orange color during their first winter and dark brown or often nearly black at the end of four or five years. Bark of the trunk ½′—¾′ thick, dark red-brown and irregularly divided by narrow shallow fissures into small plates separating on the surface into thin closely appressed scales. Wood very resinous, heavy, soft, brittle, coarse-grained, dark orange color, with thick pale yellow sapwood; occasionally manufactured into lumber.
Distribution. Low wet flats or sandy or peaty swamps; near Cape May, New Jersey, and southeastern Virginia southward near the coast to northern Florida and central Alabama.
15. [Pinus radiata] D. Don. Monterey Pine.
Leaves in 3, rarely in 2-leaved clusters, slender, bright rich green, 4′—6′ long, mostly deciduous during their third season. Flowers: male in dense spikes, yellow; female clustered, dark purple. Fruit ovoid, pointed at apex, very oblique at base, short-stalked, reflexed, 3′—7′ long, becoming deep chestnut-brown and lustrous, with scales much thickened and mammillate toward the base on the outer side of the cone, thinner on the inner side and at its apex, and armed with minute thickened incurved or straight prickles, long-persistent and often remaining closed on the branches for many years; seeds ellipsoidal, compressed, ¼′ long, with a thin brittle rough nearly black shell, their wings light brown, longitudinally striped, broadest above the middle, gradually narrowed and oblique at apex, 1′ long, ¼′ wide.
A tree, usually 40°—60° rarely 100°—115° high, with a tall trunk usually 1°—2° but occasionally 4½° in diameter, spreading branches forming a regular narrow open round-topped head, and slender branchlets light or dark orange color, at first often covered with a glaucous bloom, ultimately dark red-brown. Bark of the trunk 1½′—2′ thick, dark red-brown, and deeply divided into broad flat ridges broken on the surface into thick appressed plate-like scales. Wood light, soft, not strong, brittle, close-grained; occasionally used as fuel.
Distribution. In a narrow belt a few miles wide on the California coast from Pescadero to the shores of San Simeon Bay; in San Luis Obispo County near the village of Cambria; on the islands of Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz of the Santa Barbara group; and on Guadaloupe Island off the coast of Lower California; most abundant and of its largest size on Point Pinos south of the Bay of Monterey, California.
Largely planted for the decoration of parks in western and southern Europe, occasionally planted in the southeastern states and in Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and other regions with temperate climates, and more generally in the coast region of the Pacific states from Vancouver Island southward than any other Pine-tree.
16. [Pinus attenuata] Lemm. Knob-cone Pine.
