Although it grows naturally only in saturated soil, it sometimes takes possession of comparatively dry ground from which long-leaf pine has been cut off; a circumstance which has led some uneducated people to believe that the long-leaf does not reproduce itself after lumbering, but mutates into another species. Some writers on forestry also have been misled into thinking that P. Elliottii is destined to take the place of P. palustris in the not distant future. But the range of the slash pine is much the smaller of the two, and it has shown no evidence of extending its boundaries since it was first recognized as a distinct species, about 35 years ago.
It is not injured perceptibly by fire, except when very young. Its economic properties are practically the same as those of the long-leaf pine, from which it is seldom distinguished in the lumber and naval stores markets. Its distribution corresponds approximately with that of the sea-island cotton crop, except that this cotton is not now raised west of the Chattahoochee River, while the pine extends nearly to the Pearl River.
The Florida Spruce Pine (Pinus clausa), a near relative of P. Virginiana, is the least widely distributed of all the eastern conifers, being
Interior of a Florida Spruce Pine (Pinus clausa) Forest on a Peninsula of Lake Tsala Apopka, Citrus Co., Florida; taken from a point about twenty feet from the ground. March, 1914. The abundance of "Spanish moss" (Tillandsia usneoides) indicates the infrequency of fire.
almost confined to one state. It ranges from Baldwin County on the coast of Alabama to Dade County, Florida, about latitude 26°. Like the
