Page:Wayside and Woodland Blossoms.djvu/310

152 The Scotch-pine, as with the reader's permission we will call it, differs much according to the situation in which it is growing. In a favourable locality its trunk will grow to an altitude of one hundred feet, with a girth of twelve feet, whereas in very lofty, exposed situations it is a stunted shrub. Its bark is rugged, and of a ruddy-brown colour. Its needle-shaped leaves are in twos, and last for three years, after which they fall. The flowers are of two kinds. The males consist of many two-celled anthers spirally arranged on a spike, and the spikes are clustered round the new shoots. The female flowers consist each of a green scale, thickened and sticky at the apex and bearing on the inner side of its base two naked ovules. These scales are also associated in a spiral manner round a spike, the whole having a conical form. The male flowers produce an enormous quantity of pollen, which the wind blows in great sulphur-like clouds. Some of the pollen-grains stick to the edges of the scales on the young cones, and the pollen-shoots find their way down to the ovules and fertilize them. In the ripe cone we find, on the scales separating, there are two winged seeds under each scale The timber of P. sylvestris is very valuable, and large quantities of it are annually imported from Norway and the shores of the Baltic; there are numerous varieties of it, known commercially as Red pine, Norway pine, Riga pine, Baltic pine, etc. The tree begins to bear cones between the age of fifteen and twenty years.

It is characteristic of Pines that the branches die off early, and this gives old trees the peculiar appearance of a tall, gaunt, red mast, with a somewhat flat, spreading head.

This is not a native of Britain, though it has been grown here for about three hundred years. Its home is in the countries bordering the Mediterranean, chiefly in low ground near