Eastern White Pine
Scientific Name: Pinus strobus
— pronounced PIE-nus STROE-bus
— Pinus, Latin for pine; strobus, from the Greek strobos, meaning cone.
Pine Family (Pinaceae): over 200 species, including spruce, fir, & hemlocks.
Other Common Names: White Pine, Soft Pine
— pronounced PIE-nus STROE-bus
— Pinus, Latin for pine; strobus, from the Greek strobos, meaning cone.
Pine Family (Pinaceae): over 200 species, including spruce, fir, & hemlocks.
Other Common Names: White Pine, Soft Pine
Eastern White pine is easily distinguished from other pines growing at Brushy Hills by both its needles and cones:
- White pine needles are 3 to 5 inches long, flexible, and grow in bundles of 5. All of our other pines have needles in bundles of 2 or 3.
- The cones are 4 to 8 inches long, slender, and often have drops of sticky pitch on their scales. Our other pines have cones that are shorter, more oval, and lack pitch drops.
The bark of young trees is smooth and gray-green in color. Mature bark is gray or brown, with vertical ridges broken by horizontal furrows into irregular blocks.
Each year, the tree grows a single whorl of branches from its trunk; a new whorl’s set of branches emerge from around the trunk all at the same height, just below the terminal bud at the very top of the tree. For young trees, you can get a reliable age estimate by counting the number of whorls.
For more photos and ID help: VA Tech dendrology
Interesting Facts:
Each year, the tree grows a single whorl of branches from its trunk; a new whorl’s set of branches emerge from around the trunk all at the same height, just below the terminal bud at the very top of the tree. For young trees, you can get a reliable age estimate by counting the number of whorls.
For more photos and ID help: VA Tech dendrology
Interesting Facts:
- White pine is the tallest conifer in Eastern North America, often growing high above the surrounding canopy. The largest living Eastern White Pine is over 180 feet tall.
- Typically, Eastern White Pine lives about 200 years, but some can live over 450 years.
- Eastern White Pine grows on both wet and dry sites, poor and rich soils, and is found in all successional stages of forests.
- The seeds are eaten by birds and small mammals. The caterpillars of several moths and the Eastern Pine Elfin butterfly feed on the needles. Many birds, including bald eagles, woodpeckers, and chickadees nest in White pines.
- During colonial times, white pines’ tall straight trunks were used for the masts of sailing ships. England decreed that the best specimens were to be saved for the Royal Navy. This angered American colonists, sparking the Pine Tree Riot of 1772, one of the disputes leading up to the American Revolution.
- In Britain, Eastern White Pine is also called the Weymouth Pine – in honor of English explorer Captain George Weymouth, who took Eastern White Pine seeds to England from Maine in 1605.
- White Pine gets its name from the color of the wood.