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 scattered forest patches in Northern
Alabama, Louisiana, or Texas, you may have seen branches or small trees
shipped north to be used for Christmas decorations. In the waste land
that the lumbermen 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, standing erect,
with all its long flexible leaves bending outward like a fountain of
shining green, is handsomer 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.