THE LONGLEAF PINE The longleaf pine is one of four hard pines whose lumber is not distinguished by ordinary carpenters, but is generally called " yellow pine." " Georgia pine " ranks a little higher than the rest. That is the longleaf, which grows over a territory much greater than the state of Georgia. This is the chief source of turpentine, pitch, and tar, as well as one of the very best lumber trees of the pitch pine group. The most ornamental wood is that with the curliest grain, and the narrowest bands of alternating dark and light colour. It grows slowly in hard, sandy soils on the damp coast plains near the Gulf of Mexico.
We shall know this tree from all other pines by the length of its needles. They are twelve to eighteen inches long, flexible, dark green, shining, three in a bundle, enclosed at the base in long, pale, silvery sheaths. They remain on the tree but two years, therefore the tree top is bare except for thick tufts of these drooping leaves on the ends of the branches. If you have never seen these trees growing in their natural forest belt, that ranges from Virginia to Florida, and west to the Mississippi River, or in small scat tered forest patches in Northern Alabama,Louisi ana, or Texas, you may have seen branches or small trees shipped north to be used for Christmas decorations. In the waste land that the lumber men have cut over, in the neighbourhood of these longleaf forests, men go in early December, and cut the little trees. Saplings two or three feet
high bring good prices in the Northern markets, where holly branches, ropes of ground pine, sprigs of mistletoe, and leaves of Southern palms are sold. A little two-foot longleaf pine, stand ing erect, with all its long flexible leaves bending outward like a fountain of shining green, is hand somer than any palm of the same size.
The popularity of these pine shoots is growing, and those who cut them seem not to realise that they are killing the forests of the future. Trees grow from seeds which fall in the territory cleared by the lumbermen. If these little trees that Nature plants are cut as fast as they show themselves above the forest floor,, how are the longleaf pine forests to be restored? It is a great problem, for a great part of the natural wealth of the South is in these lumber tracts, now being cleared at a terrific rate of speed, and the land left practically worthless when stripped.
The cones of the longleaf pine are narrow and tapering. The scales are thick, and each bears a small. spine. The leaves are the distinguishing trait, and the tall, slender trunk crowned by a long open head of short, twisted branches.