White Pine: the King of Trees

While acclaimed naturalist Henry David Thoreau might have known just about every tree that grew in and around Walden Pond, he was-- like me-- partial to white pines. “There is no finer tree than the pine,” he wrote in his journal, then the tallest tree in an Eastern forest. And unlike so many others, it stayed green all winter.

I’m lucky, as one towers over my modest backyard. While it’s actually rooted in my neighbor’s yard, I’ve enjoyed its many benefits-- including being lullaby-ed to sleep by the whinnying of a screech owl, perhaps the same one that has been gracing the tree for years. Squirrels scamper up, down, and around its trunk, and I’ve spotted dozens of bird species roosting or feeding there, everything from titmice to blackpoll warblers. (A cardinal just flew from the tree and perched atop the chair next to me, at the patio table I’m sitting at under the tree.)

Few trees have played a larger role in American culture than the pine. In colonial times when ships were so critical for transport, first British and then American navies relied on white pines, picking out “mast pines” that were specially marked and reserved for the Crown to use in English ships. Pines frame most American homes, and how many of us grew up watching TV in a pine-paneled den? The tree is so useful that only 1% of old growth pine forests remain in the eastern US-- we logged out the rest. 

Today, pines of 100 feet in height are common, but back in the day, 200-foot-pines were more typical. In Cook State Forest in Pennsylvania’s Clarion County, there is a stand of uncut white pines, with one, dubbed the "Longfellow Pine” that measures 184 feet tall and is widely regarded as the tallest white pine known today. 

Like all pines, the white pine holds its needles in clusters, something spruces and firs do not do. Each pine has a characteristic number of needles, which in the white pine is five; this alone makes the tree easy to identify, especially as the word “white” has five letters, one for each needle in its bundle.

While it is of course an evergreen, the tree’s needles live about 18 months. So every fall the white pine sheds its needles from two springs ago in a surprising orange shower (my neighbor, bless his heart, chafes at it but I revel in the piles of pine needles).

A conifer, the tree produces male and female cones, the female cones the familiar one. The smaller, almost inconspicuous male cones form in the spring, releasing billions of pollen grains into the air, as the tree is wind-pollinated. Yes, pine pollen likely makes you sneeze.

The long, conspicuous female cones produce seeds-- pine nuts!-- which are craved by a large number of animals, including squirrels and many birds. The cones also produce sap, which gives us the specific name strobus, Latin for “tree that produces gum.” 

That gum proved invaluable to the Lenape and other First Nations people, who took advantage of its antiseptic qualities for treating skin issues like burns, wounds, and boils. As the needles are rich in vitamins, pine infusions and teas treated coughs, influenza, colds, and more. 

In the modern era, a new recognition of the importance of pines has arisen as people rediscover the health benefits of trees and forests. In one extraordinary experiment, a Japanese scientist sprayed a small amount of pinene, the chemical that gives pines its characteristic scent, in a hospital’s neonatal ward, allowing newborns who have ever not been outside to smell its scent. Their blood pressures literally dropped as the babies “chilled out.” Turns out we are hardwired to be calmed by pine trees. 

So get that pine-scented candle today-- you have a new reason to-- and go sit in a pine forest soon.