The catkins of the male flowers are yellowish; and being placed on slender shoots of the current year, near the extremity, twenty or thirty together, they form bundles, surmounted by some scarcely developed leaves. Each catkin is not more than half an inch long, on a very short peduncle, and with a rounded denticulated crest. The female catkins are whitish, and are situated two or three together, at the extremity of the strongest and most vigorous shoots. Each female catkin has a separate peduncle, charged with reddish, scarious, lanceolate scales, and is surrounded at its base with a double row of the same scales, which served to envelop it before it expanded; its form is perfectly oval, and its total length about half an inch. The scales which form the female catkin are of a whitish green; the bractea on the back is slightly reddish on its upper side; and the stigma, which has two points, is of a bright red. After fertilization, the scales augment in thickness; and, becoming firmly pressed against each other, they form by their aggregation a fruit, which is three years before it ripens. During the first year it is scarcely larger than the female catkin; and during the second year it becomes globular, and about the size of a walnut. The third year the cones increase rapidly in size; the scales lose their reddish tinge, and become of a beautiful green, the point alone remaining red; and at last, about the end of the third year, they attain maturity. At this period the cones are about four inches long and three inches in diameter, and they have assumed a general reddish hue. The convex part of the scales forms a depressed pyramid, with rounded angles, the summit of which is umbilical. Each scale is hollow at its base; and in its interior are two cavities, each containing a seed much larger than that of any other kind of European pine, but the wing of which is, on the contrary, much shorter. The woody shell which envelops the kernel is hard and difficult to break in the common kind, but in the variety fragilis it is tender, and easily broken by the fingers. In both the kernel is white, sweet, and agreeable to the taste. The taproot of the stone pine is nearly as strong as that of P. pinaster; and, like that species, the trees, when transplanted, generally lean to one side, from the head not being correctly balanced. Hence, in full-grown trees of the Stone pine there is often a similar curvature at the base of the trunk to that of the pinaster. The palmate form of the cotyledons of the genus Pinus is particularly conspicuous in those of P. pinea. When one of the ripe kernels is split in two, the cotyledons separate, so as to represent roughly the form of a hand; and this, in some parts of France, the country people call _la main de Dieu_, and believed to be a remedy in cases of intermittent fever if swallowed in uneven numbers, such as 3, 5, or 7. The duration of the tree is much greater