pine barren

American  

noun

1. a tract of sandy or peaty soil in which pine trees are the principal growth, as in low-lying areas near the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States.

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Etymology

Origin of pine barren

An Americanism dating back to 1725–35

Example Sentences

In the blackness before dawn, the Silver Meteor streaked through the South Carolina pine barren.

From Time Magazine Archive

The southern provinces are the countries where nature has formed the greatest variety of alligators, snakes, serpents; and scorpions, from the smallest size, up to the pine barren, the largest species known here.

From Letters from an American Farmer by St. John de Crèvecoeur, J. Hector

The little grey reared and plunged and I landed—where, I don’t know; but the next that I remember, I was standing alone in the pine barren.

From The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 Volume 23, Number 1 by Various

There was a veritable paradise of birds in the pine barren, Dick Sherrill had said, robins and bluebirds, flickers and woodpeckers with blazing cockades, shrikes and chewinks.

From Diane of the Green Van by Dalrymple, Leona

The eyrie had become "tiresome," the fragrance of the orange flowers "enervating;" as for pine barrens, she never wished to see a pine barren again.

From East Angels by Woolson, Constance Fenimore