"Much of Pennsylvania and almost all of New York outside the Adirondacks — so it has been asserted — was one vast White Pine forest. [...] When the male flowers bloomed in these illimitable pineries, thousands of miles of forest aisle were swept with the golden smoke of this reckless fertility, and great storms of pollen were swept from the primeval shores far out to sea and to the superstitious sailor seemed to be 'raining brimstone' on the deck." A Natural History of TREES of Eastern and Central North America , Donald Culross Peattie