The Pine

Teacher’s Story

ONE other of our native trees is more beautiful than the pine. In the East, we have the white pine with its fine-tasselled foliage, growing often 150 to 200 feet in height and reaching an age of from two to three hundred years. On the Pacific coast, the splendid sugar pine lifts its straight trunk from two to three hundred feet in height; and although the trunk may be from six to ten feet in diameter yet it looks slender, so tall is the tree. A sugar pine cone on my desk measures 22 inches in length and weighs almost one pound, although it is dried and emptied of seed.

There is something majestic about the pines, which even the most ignorant feel. Their dark foliage outlined against wintry skies appeals to the imagination, and well it may, for it represents an ancient tree-costume. The pines are among the most ancient of trees, and were the contemporaries of those plants which were put to sleep, during the Devonian age, in the coal beds. It is because the pines and the other evergreens belong essentially to earlier ages, when the climate was far different than it is to-day, that they do not shed their leaves like the more recent, deciduous trees. They stand among us, representatives of an ancient race, and wrap their green foliage about them as an Indian sachem does his blanket, in calm disregard of modern fashion of attire.

All cone-bearing trees have typically a central stem from which the branches come off in whorls, but so many things have happened to the old pine trees that the evidence of the whorls is not very plain; the young trees show this method of growth clearly, the white pine having five branches in each whorl. Sometimes pines are seen which have two or three stems near the top; but this is a story of injury to the tree and its later victory.

The very tip of the central stem in the evergreens is called “the leader,” because it leads the growth of the tree upward; it stretches up from the center of the whorl of last year’s young branches, and there at its tip are the buds which produce this year’s branches. There is a little beetle which seems possessed of evil, for it likes best of all to lay its rascally eggs in the very tip of this leader; the grub, after hatching, feeds upon the bud and bores down into the shoot, killing it. Then comes the question of which branch of the upper whorl shall be elected to rise up and take the place of the dead leader; but this is an election which we know less about than we do of those resulting from our blanket ballots. Whether the tree chooses, or whether the branches aspire, we may not know; but we do know that one branch of this upper whorl arises and continues the growth of the tree. Sometimes there are two candidates for this position, and they each make such a good struggle for the place that the tree grows on with two stems instead of one—and sometimes with even three. This evil insect injures the leaders of other conifers also, but these are less likely to allow two competitors to take the place of the dead leader.

The lower branches of many of the pines come off almost at right angles from the bole; the foliage is borne above the branches, which gives the pines a very different appearance from that of other trees. The foliage of most of the pines is dark green, looking almost black in winter; the pitch pine has the foliage yellowish green, and the white pine, bluish green; each species has its own peculiar shade. There is great variation in the color and form of the bark of different species. The white pine has nearly smooth bark on the young trees, but on the older ones it has ridges that are rather broad, flat and scaly, separated by shallow sutures, while the pitch pine has its bark in scales like the covering of a giant alligator.

The foliage of the pine consists of pine needles set in little bundles on raised points which look like little brackets along the twigs. When the pine needles are young, the bundle is enclosed in a sheath making the twig look as if it were covered with pin-feathers. In many of the species this sheath remains, encasing the base of the bundle of needles; but in the white pine it is shed early. The number of leaves in the bundle helps to determine the tree; the white pine has five needles in each bunch, the pitch pine has three, while the Austrian pine has two. There is a great difference in the length and the color of the needles of different species of pine. Those of the white pine are soft, delicate and pliable, and from three to four inches in length; the needles of the pitch pine are stiff and coarse and about the same length; the white pine needles are triangular in section, and are set so as to form distinct tassels, while those of the Austrian pine simply clothe the ends of the twigs. The needles of the pine act like the strings of an aeolian harp; and the wind, in passing through the tree, sets them into vibration, making a sighing sound which seems to the listener like the voice of the tree. Therefore, the pine is the most companionable of all our trees and, to one who observes them closely, each tree has its own tones and whispers a different story.

The appearance of the unripe cone is another convincing evidence that mathematics is the basis of the beautiful. The pattern of the overlapping scales is intricate and yet regular—to appreciate it one needs to try to sketch it. Beneath each scale, when it opens wide, we find nestled at its base two little seeds in twin boxes; each provided with a little wing so that it can sail off with the wind to find a place to grow. The shape of the scales of the cone is another distinguishing character of the pine, and sketching the outside of scales from several different species of pine cones will develop the pupils’ powers of observation; the tip of the scale may be thickened or armed with a spine, and one wonders if these spines are for the purpose of discouraging the squirrels from stealing the green seeds.

The pine cone requires two years for maturing; the pistillate flower from which it is developed is a tiny cone with each scale spread wide and standing upright to catch the pollen for the tiny ovule nestled within it. The pistillate flower of the white pine grows near the tip of the new twig, and is pinkish in color. In the Austrian pine it is the merest pink dot at first, but after a little shows itself to be a true cone with pink-purple scales, which stand up very erect and makes a pretty object when viewed through a lens; each scale is pink at its three-pointed tip, with pink wings just below, the inner portions being pale green. The cone is set just beside the growing tip of the twig, is pointed upward, and its sheath-scales are turned back like chaff around its base.

In June when the new shoots of the pine twigs stand up like pale green candles on a Christmas tree, at their bases may be found the staminate catkins set in radiating whorls, making galaxies of golden stars against the dark green background of foliage. In the Austrian pine, one of these pollen catkins may be an inch or two long and a half-inch in width; each little scale of this cone is an anther sac, filled to bursting with yellow pollen. From these starry pollen cones there descends a yellow shower every time a breeze passes; for the pine trees depend upon the wind to sift their pollen dust into the lifted cups of the cone scales, which will close upon the treasure soon. The pollen grains of pine are very beautiful when seen through a microscope; and it seems almost incredible that the masses of yellow dust sifted in showers from the pines when in blossom, should be composed of these beautiful structures. When the pine forests on the shores of the Great Lakes are in bloom, the pollen covers the waves for miles out from the shores.

If we examine the growing tips of the pine branches, we find the leaves look callow and pin-feathery. The entire leaf is wrapped in a smooth, shining, silken sheath, at the tip of which its green point protrudes. The sheath is tough like parchment and is cylindrical because the pine needles within it are perfectly adjusted one to another in cylindrical form. The sheath is made up of several layers, one over the other, and may be pulled apart. The new leaves are borne on the new, pale green wood.

The uses of pines are many. The lumber of many of the species, especially that of the white pine, is free from knots and is used for almost everything from house-building to masts for ships. In the Southern States, the long-leafed pines are tapped for resin, which is not the sap of the tree, as is generally supposed. Pine sap is like other sap; the resin is a product of certain glands of the tree, and is of great use to it in closing wounds and thus keeping out the spores of destructive fungi. It is this effort of the tree to heal its wounds that makes it pour resin into the cuts made by the turpentine gatherers. This resin is taken to a distillery, where the turpentine is given off as a vapor and condensed in a coiled tube which is kept cold. What is left is known as “rosin.”