PINUS SYLVESTRIS, Scots Pine
- Pinus sylvestris, Linnæus, Sp. Pl. 1000 (excl. var.) (1753); Lambert, Genus Pinus, i. tab. I. (1803); Loudon, Arb. et Frut. Brit. iv. 2153 (1838); Willkomm, Forstliche Flora, 193 (1887); Mathieu, Flore Forestière, 579 (1897); Kent, in Veitch’s Man. Coniferæ, 379 (1900); Kirchner, Loew u. Schröter, Lebengeschich, Blütenpfl. Mitteleuropas, i. 175 (1904); Mayr, Fremdländ, Wald- u. Parkbäume, 347 (1906); Borthwick, in Trans. R. Eng. Arb. Soc. vi. 205 (1906).
A tree commonly 100 feet, rarely attaining 150 feet in height, with a girth of 10 to 15 feet. Stem usually straight and cylindrical, with the branches regularly whorled in young trees, forming a pyramidal crown; in older and isolated trees, branching irregular, with a flattened crown. Bark different in the lower and upper parts of the trunk ; towards the base thick, fissured into irregular longitudinal plates, scaly, and reddish brown or greyish brown in colour; on the upper part of the stem,’ owing to the outer portion continually falling off in thin papery scales, the bark remains very thin, smooth, shining and bright red. Young shoots greenish, smooth and shining ; becoming greyish brown in the second year; marked with the pulvini of the scale-leaves, which are early deciduous. Buds long-oval, pointed, usually non- resinous, covered by lanceolate acuminate scales, fimbriated on their edges, the upper ones with their tips free and not recurved. Leaves two in a bundle; sheaths at first white, ⅓ inch long, speedily becoming shrivelled, brown, and short; the pair of leaves close together, but not appressed, usually about 2 inches long but varying under different conditions from 1 to 4 inches, dark green with interrupted lines of stomata on the convex side, glaucous with many well-defined lines of stomata on the flat inner side, plano-convex in cross-section, linear, stiff, acute at the apex, somewhat bent, smooth, finely serrate in margin; resin-canals marginal. The leaves persist usually three years.
Male flowers in dense clusters at the lower part of the current year’s shoot, ¼ inch long, oval, short-stalked, surrounded at the base by four yellowish bracts ; anther with small rounded upright connective. Female flowers, solitary, opposite or occasionally whorled, apparently terminating the young shoot, erect at first, but becoming pendant immediately after pollination, stalked, globose, reddish, composed of rounded bracts and almost circular ovular scales, the latter having a beak-like process on the upper side and bearing two minute ovules.
Cones shortly stalked, variable in shape, usually ovoid-conic with an acute apex, oblique or nearly symmetrical at the base, greyish or dull brown in colour, 1 to 3
1 According to Shaw of Boston, who is the greatest living authority on the genus Pinus, this peculiarity of the bark of the upper part of the tree being thin and reddish, owing to the constant shedding of scales, occurs only in three pines, viz. P. sylvestris, P. densiflora, and P. patula.
