The white or Weymouth pine, which up to the present time has proved to be of greater commercial value than any other tree on the continent, extends westward from southern Newfoundland and the coasts of the maritime provinces of Canada to Minnesota, and occupies nearly the entire drainage area of the St. Lawrence, together with an extension southward along the Appalachians nearly to their southern limit.
The white pine is a large tree for the region in which it grows. Its height is from 70 to 150 feet, with a diameter at the base of from 3 to 9 feet. It thrives best on sandy soil and hills of glacial drift, and endures a severe winter climate, as well as the frequently long-continued droughts of the hot summers. Its wood is soft, compact, with an even, straight grain, and is not conspicuously resinous. The sap-wood is nearly white and the heart of a light brown, slightly tinged with red; it is easily worked and susceptible of a good polish; it is more extensively used for boards, shingles, etc., than any other wood in the eastern portion of the continent, and is in demand also for cabinet-work, the interior finish of buildings, ship-building, and many other purposes.
The southern pine—known also as the "long-leaved pine"; "Georgia pine," for the reason that the lumber derived from it was first extensively shipped from that State; "yellow pine," in reference to the golden colour of its wood; and "hard pine," in distinction from the softer white pine—is another valuable species. The tree with these several synonyms, of which the term southern pine will here be used, forms open forests with but scanty undergrowth, over a region extending from near the Atlantic coast in the Carolinas and Florida, westward to the delta region of the Mississippi, and reappears again to the southward of the Ozark Hills. Although not so large, and to many admirers of beautiful trees not so picturesque or pleasing as its relative in the more rigorous climate of the St. Lawrence basin, the southern pine, growing within the reach of the moist, warm winds from the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, is still an attractive tree, especially when young and when freedom is afforded to expand its boughs. It is seldom over 100 feet high, and as cut for lumber has on an average a diameter of about 2 feet at the base, although individuals measuring 3 or 4 feet in diameter are not rare in certain favoured areas. It grows best on dry, sandy soil, outside the flood-plains of streams, where it forms monotonous forests, with but few intergrowths of other trees. The wood is heavy,
hard, strong, durable, coarse-grained, very resinous, and of many shades of brown and yellow. When sawed into lumber, it serves a wide range of uses, more especially for the frames of buildings and ships, and for the floors and interior finish of houses.
Next to the southern pine, the most characteristic tree of the Atlantic coastal plain southward from Virginia and westward through the Gulf States, is the cypress, also a conifer, but, like the tamarack, sheds its leaves in the autumn. The cypress grows especially in swampy localities, and has a widely expanded base, suitable for support on marshy soil, and reaches a large girth, although seldom over 75 feet high. Aged and most picturesque examples are growing in isolated positions in Lake Drummond, the central water body of the Dismal Swamp, and in many other similar situations in the belt of low country fringing the borders of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. Its wood is used for most of the purposes for which the southern pine is employed, and now that the white pine is approaching extinction, is to a considerable extent supplying the demand for cabinet-wood.
In glancing at the larger and most numerous trees of the Atlantic forest, and those of greatest utility, we should not neglect the humbler plants, usually of little, if any, purely commercial value, but priceless on account of their beauty and the fragrance of their flowers, which grow beneath the shade of their larger and more stately associates or are content to possess the local areas, perhaps high on the mountains, where the conditions of climate or soil are unfavourable for the growth of large trees. Throughout the eastern portion of the United States, but more especially on the slopes and summit portions of the Appalachians, there are many species of azalea, laurel, rhododendron, etc., which grow luxuriantly and in spring and early summer furnish a wealth of bloom that is scarcely rivalled elsewhere on the continent. In this same region also, but extending westward to Michigan and Minnesota, and even to eastern Nebraska, grows the redbud or Judas-tree, which each May becomes as thickly set throughout
all its branches with small crimson blossoms as are the tree-like coral in tropical seas with expanded polyps. This beautiful tree of low growth many times gives to the mountains of Virginia, when seen from a distance, a delicate blush like that which the osiers earlier in the spring impart to the marshy vales and river-banks. A companion of the redbud, but far more widely distributed, is the dogwood or cornel, of several species, the most conspicuous of which, and in the Appalachian region the most common, is the flowering dogwood. In May and June this species puts out a profusion of clusters of small greenish flowers, each of which is surrounded by a broadly expanded and very showy corolla-like involucre, composed of four white or pinkish inversely heart-shaped leaves. When the cornel is at the height of its spring-time glory it stands forth amid the tender greens, russets, and pinks of the unfolding leaves of the various trees and shrubs among which it grows as if the orchards and forests had been commingled by some fairy gardener. In autumn the cornel again becomes conspicuous in the woodlands by reason of its clusters of coral-red fruit.
In the splendid Atlantic forests, with their marvellous intermingling of shining pine-needles, broad, swaying leaves, and many-coloured trunks, there are also vines and creepers sometimes forming impenetrable tangles, as where the broad leaves of the wild grape grow in pendent sheets of green from supporting trees, or the jessamine fills the air with fragrance. Of the many vines which entwine the trunks of trees, mantle the rocks, and quickly claim abandoned fields, especially in Virginia and neighbouring States to the southward, none is more beautiful or more highly prized for the charm it adds alike to fields, fences, and forests than the familiar Virginia creeper. The glory of this widely distributed vine comes in the autumn when its leaves change from green to the most brilliant scarlet. During the season of harvest also, when the trees are arrayed in their greatest splendour, the ground is yellow with golden-rods or purple with asters. This annual carnival of colour embraces the entire Atlantic forest, but
is most resplendent in the region of the Hudson and St. Lawrence. A charming little denizen of the Atlantic forest is the lowly and humble arbutus, or Mayflower, which springs up through the dead leaves carpeting the ground in early spring, and fills the air with its delicious perfume. The Mayflower is a trailing plant, but a few inches high, with rounded or oval leaves, which remain green all winter and furnish a pleasing setting for the small pink or rose-coloured blossoms, which appear in early spring even before the snow has melted. It reaches great perfection beneath the pines of New England and about the Laurentian lakes, but extends far southward along the Appalachians, where elevation gives conditions similar to those of the lower region at the north.