Character of the White Pine.
The representatives of the white pine in the West are the silver pine and the sugar pine. Though both may be easily recognized as near relatives of the eastern species, either by the typical form of the cones or by the plan and structure of the foliage, each of the western trees possesses a majesty and beauty of its own. The silver pine is more compact in its branches than the white pine, and has somewhat denser and more rigid foliage. Its dark aspect is well suited to the mountains and ridges of the Northwest, where it commonly abounds. The sugar pine, which is the tallest of all pines, impresses us by its picturesque individuality. Its great perpendicular trunk not infrequently rises, clear of limbs, to the height of a hundred and fifty feet, and is surmounted by an open pyramidal crown of half that length, composed of long and slender branches that are full of motion. While the texture of the foliage is not as delicate as in the white pine, it is smooth and elastic, and has an even bluish tinge that shows to great advantage when the needles are stirred by the wind. Its cones, which are of enormous size, hang in clusters from the extremities of the distant boughs, which droop beneath the unusual weight. Two of these cones, which I have lying before me, measure each nineteen inches in length. Well might Douglas, the botanist who named this tree, call it “the most princely of the genus.”
Sugar Pines
Young Bull Pines in the foreground at the right and an Incense Cedar at the left.
The longleaf pines of the Southern States should be noticed for their picturesqueness. The Cuban pine is restricted to isolated tracts in the region of the Gulf and eastern Georgia. The loblolly pine and the longleaf pine, near relatives of the Cuban pine, cover extensive tracts in low, level regions of the Southern States, and are most interesting in old age. Standing, it may be, on a sandy plain not far from the sea, among straggling palmettos, they lift their ample crowns well up on their tall, straight stems, and contort their branches into surprising forms; so that, looking through their crowns at a distance in the dry, hazy air of the South, with possibly a red sunset sky for a background, they are extremely fantastic and entertaining.
There are two other pines that have a similar tortuous habit in the growth of their branches: the pitch pine of our eastern coast States and the lodgepole pine of the Rocky Mountains. These, however, have an esthetic value for quite a different reason. In the case of the pitch pine it is due to a natural peculiarity otherwise rare among conifers; for, this tree has the power of sprouting afresh from the stump that has been left after cutting or forest fires, thus healing in time the raggedness and devastation resulting from necessity, neglect, or indifference. The lodgepole pine of the West performs the same patient work over burned areas through the remarkable power of germination belonging to its seeds, even after being scorched by fire. Thus both of these trees not only furnish useful material, but restore health and calmness to the forest.
