Pinus divaricata. Sudw.
Scrub Pine. Gray Pine. Spruce Pine. Jack Pine.
Habitat and Range.—Sterile, sandy soil: lowlands, boggy plains, rocky slopes.
Nova Scotia, northwesterly to the Athabasca river, and northerly down the Mackenzie to the Arctic circle.
Maine,—Traveller mountain and Grand lake (G. L. Goodale); Beal's island on Washington county coast, Harrington, Orland, and Cape Rosier (C. G. Atkins); Schoodic peninsula in Gouldsboro, a forest 30 feet high (F. M. Day, E. L. Rand, et al.); Flagstaff (Miss Kate Furbush); east branch of Penobscot (Mrs. Haines); the Forks (Miss Fanny E. Hoyt); Lake Umbagog (Wm. Brewster); New Hampshire,—around the shores of Lake Umbagog, on points extending into the lake, rare (Wm. Brewster in lit., 1899); Welch mountains (Bull. Torr. Bot. Club, XVIII, 150); Vermont,—rare, but few trees at each station; Monkton in Addison county (R. E. Robinson); Fairfax, Franklin county (Bates); Starkesboro (Pringle).
West through northern New York, northern Illinois, and Michigan to Minnesota.
Habit.—Usually a low tree, 15-30 feet high and 6-8 inches in diameter at the ground, but under favorable conditions, as upon the wooded points and islands of Lake Umbagog, attaining a height of 50-60 feet, with a diameter of 10-15 inches. Extremely variable in habit. In thin soils and upon bleak sites the trunk is for the most part crooked and twisted, the head scrubby, stunted, and variously distorted, resembling in shape and proportions the pitch pine under similar conditions. In deeper soils, and in situations protected from the winds, the stem is erect, slender, and tapering, surmounted by a stately head with long, flexible branches, scarcely less regular in outline than the spruce. Foliage yellowish-green, bunched at the ends of the branchlets.
Bark.—Bark of trunk in old trees dark brown, rounded-ridged, rough-scaly at the surface; branchlets dark purplish-brown, rough with the persistent bases of the fallen leaves; season's shoots yellowish-green, turning to reddish-brown.
Winter Buds and Leaves.—Branch-buds light brown, ovate, apex acute or rounded, usually enclosed in resin.
Leaves in twos, divergent from a short close sheath, about 1 inch in length and scarcely 1/12 inch in width, yellowish-green, numerous, stiff, curved or twisted, cross-section showing two fibrovascular bundles; outline narrowly linear; apex sharp-pointed; outer surface convex, inner concave or flat.