The species ranges from southern New Jersey to southern Arkansas, Oklahoma, eastern Texas and southwestern Tennessee, but does not occur in the lower half of the Florida peninsula. It is an important timber-tree, manufactured into all descriptions of scantlings, boarding and finish, but the wood is of various qualities. It may be recognized by the spine of its cone in both years of growth. Excepting the formidable armature of the cone of P. pungens, the spines are the strongest and most persistent of all the species of eastern North America.
Fig. 264, Cone. Fig. 265, Leaf-fascicle. Fig. 266, Magnified leaf-section. Fig. 267. Magnified scales of the conelet.
Spring-shoots multinodal. Bark-formation late, the upper trunks of mature trees smooth. Leaves in fascicles of 2, from 9 to 12 cm. long; resin-ducts medial, hypoderm weak, sometimes of a single row, biform when of two rows, endoderm with thin outer walls. Conelets reflexed, mucronate. Cones from 4 to 7 cm. long, reflexed, ovate, symmetrical, deciduous on some trees, persistent on others; apophyses pale dull nut-brown, thin or slightly thickened, the prickle usually deciduous.
A tree that sometimes attains important dimensions, growing singly or in small groves from the neighborhood of Charleston, S. C., to eastern Louisiana and central Mississippi, most abundant in a strip of territory on either side of the northern boundary of Florida. Among the Pines of the southeastern United States it is the only species with late bark-formation, and is therefore easily identified.
Fig. 256, Cone. Fig. 257, Enlarged scale of the conelet. Fig. 258, Leaf-fascicle and magnified leaf-section. Fig. 259, Dermal tissues of the leaf magnified, with a double row of hypoderm cells.
1768 P. echinata Miller, Gard. Dict. ed. 8. 1788 P. squarrosa Walter, Fl. Carol. 237. 1803 P. mitis Michaux, Fl. Bor. Am. ii. 204. 1803 P. variabilis Lambert, Gen. Pin. i. 22, t. 15. 1854 P. Royleana Jamieson in Jour. Hort. Soc. Lond. ix. 52, f.
Spring-shoots multinodal, somewhat pruinose. Bark forming early, rough on the upper trunk. Leaves in fascicles of 2 and 3, from 7 to 12 cm. long; resin-ducts medial, with an occasional internal duct, hypoderm weak, biform when of two rows of cells, endoderm with thin outer walls. Conelets mucronate. Cones from 4 to 6 cm. long, ovate-conic, symmetrical, often persistent; apophyses dull pale nut-brown, thin or somewhat thickened along a transverse keel, the umbo salient, the mucro more or less persistent.