Distribution. Middle and southern New Jersey; Plymouth, Luzerne County, and central, southern and western Pennsylvania to Columbia County, Georgia, Dallas County, Alabama (near Selma, _T. G. Harbison_), and to the hills of northeastern Mississippi (Bear Creek near its junction with the Tennessee River, _E. N. Lowe_), through eastern and middle Tennessee to western Kentucky and to southeastern and southern (Scioto County) Ohio, and southern Indiana; usually small in the Atlantic states and only on light sandy soil, spreading rapidly over exhausted fields; of its largest size west of the Alleghany Mountains on the low hills of southern Indiana. 25. Pinus clausa Sarg. Sand Pine. Spruce Pine. [Illustration: Fig. 32] Leaves slender, flexible, dark green, 2′—3½′ long, marked by 10—20 rows of stomata, deciduous during their third and fourth years. Flowers: male in short crowded spikes, dark orange color; female lateral on stout peduncles. Fruit elongated ovoid-conic, often oblique at base, usually clustered and reflexed, 2′—3½′ long, nearly sessile or short-stalked, with convex scales armed with short stout straight or recurved prickles, becoming dark yellow-brown in autumn; some of the cones opening at once, others remaining closed for three or four years before liberating their seeds, ultimately turning to an ashy gray color; others still unopened becoming enveloped in the growing tissues of the stem and branches and finally entirely covered by them; seeds nearly triangular, compressed, ¼′ long, with a black slightly roughened shell, their wings widest near or below the middle, ¾′ long, about ¼′ wide. A tree, usually 15°—20° high, with a stem rarely a foot in diameter, generally clothed to the ground with wide-spreading branches forming a bushy flat-topped head, and slender tough flexible branchlets, pale yellow-green when they first appear, becoming light orange-brown and ultimately ashy gray; occasionally growing to the height of 70°—80° with a trunk 2° in diameter. Bark on the lower part of the trunk ⅓′—½′ thick, deeply divided by narrow fissures into irregularly shaped generally oblong plates separating on the surface into thin closely appressed bright red-brown scales; on the upper part of the trunk and on the branches thin, smooth, ashy gray. Wood light, soft, not strong, brittle, light orange color or yellow, with thick nearly white sapwood; occasionally used for the masts of small vessels. Distribution. Coast of the Gulf of Mexico from southern Alabama to Peace Creek, western Florida; eastern Florida from the neighborhood of St. Augustine to New River, Dade County, covering sandy wind-swept plains near the coast; growing to its largest size and most abundant in the interior of the peninsula (Lake and Orange Counties). 26. Pinus muricata D. Don. Prickle-cone Pine. [Illustration: Fig. 33]