A tree, frequently 70° high, with a straight trunk sometimes free of branches for 20°—30° and rarely exceeding 2° in diameter, long spreading branches forming an open symmetrical head, and slender tough flexible pale yellow-green branchlets turning dark purple during their first winter and darker the following year; often not more than 20°—30° tall, with a stem 10′—12′ in diameter; generally fruiting when only a few years old; sometimes shrubby with several low slender stems. Bark of the trunk thin, dark brown slightly tinged with red, very irregularly divided into narrow rounded connected ridges separating on the surface into small thick closely appressed scales. Wood light, soft, not strong, close-grained, clear pale brown or rarely orange color, with thick nearly white sapwood; used for fuel and occasionally for railway-ties and posts; occasionally manufactured into lumber.
Distribution. From Nova Scotia to the valley of the Athabasca River and down the Mackenzie to about latitude 65° north, ranging southward to the coast of Maine, northern New Hampshire and Vermont, the Island of Nantucket (Wauwinet, _J. W. Harshburger_), northern New York, the shores of Saginaw Bay, Michigan, the southern shores of Lake Michigan in Illinois, the valley of the Wisconsin River, Wisconsin, and central and southeastern Minnesota (with isolated groves in Root River valley, near Rushford, Fillmore County); abundant in central Michigan, covering tracts of barren lands; common and of large size in the region north of Lake Superior; most abundant and of its greatest size west of Lake Winnipeg and north of the Saskatchewan, here often spreading over great areas of sandy sterile soil.
22. Pinus glabra Walt. Spruce Pine. Cedar Pine.
Leaves soft, slender, dark green, 1½′—3′ long, marked by numerous rows of stomata, deciduous at the end of their second and in the spring of their third year. Flowers: male in short crowded clusters, yellow; female raised on slender slightly ascending peduncles. Fruit single or in clusters of 2 or 3, reflexed on short stout stalks, subglobose to oblong-ovoid, ½′—2′ long, becoming reddish brown and rather lustrous, with thin slightly concave scales armed with minute straight or incurved usually deciduous prickles; seeds nearly triangular, full and rounded on the sides, ⅛′ long, with a thin dark gray shell mottled with black and wings broadest below the middle, ⅝′ long, ¼′ wide.