This pine is remarkable for the very wide, bright bands of resin, which fill up the autumn wood, and make the annual rings of this timber the most distinct of all. The rings are rather wide, and the medullary ray is invisible. The spring wood is of a pale yellow colour. Pitch pine comes from America, and chiefly from the southern part of the United States.

This timber becomes brittle and defective in age, but when from a fairly young tree is one of the very strongest timbers, bearing great loads almost as well as oak. It has also the rare quality of being durable in varying wet and dry situations. Its handsome appearance makes it much sought after for ornamental purposes also, but there is much waste in conversion owing to the large amount of sap-wood.

There is very great difficulty in shrinking this timber in seasoning, and in fact it appears impossible to thoroughly do so. Apparently well-seasoned timber will frequently, when its surface is planed off, commence to shrink again, and the writer once saw a piece of this wood, which had been glued down for more than seven years, suddenly overcome the restraining influence of the glue, and shrink quite one-eighth of an inch, the occurrence being accompanied by a loud report. As might be gathered from this experience, pitch pine does not hold glue well, and this fact, together with its tendency to split when kept from shrinking, makes it very difficult to use with safety.

The vast amount of resin in the wood makes it a very hard and difficult material to work in, as it clogs e\ery cutting tool.

Pitch pine is liable to be brittle at the heart of the tree, and is often 'cuppy.'