Pinus strobus, commonly called the eastern white pine, northern white pine, white pine, Weymouth pine (British), and soft pine is a large pine native to eastern North America. It occurs from Newfoundland, Canada, west through the Great Lakes region to southeastern Manitoba and Minnesota, United States, and south along the Appalachian Mountains and upper Piedmont to northernmost Georgia and very rare in some of the higher elevations in northeastern Alabama. It is considered rare in Indiana.
The Haudenosaunee maintain the tree as the central symbol of their multinational confederation, calling it the "Tree of Peace", where the Seneca use the name o'sóä'<nowiki /> and the Mohawk people call it onerahtase'ko:wa. Within the Wabanaki Confederacy, the Mi'kmaq use the term guow to name the tree, both the Wolastoqewiyik and Peskotomuhkatiyik call it kuw or kuwes, and the Abenaki use the term kowa.
It is known as the "Weymouth pine" in the United Kingdom, after Captain George Weymouth of the British Royal Navy, who brought its seeds to England from Maine in 1605.
Distribution
thumb|Native eastern white pine, [[Sylvania Wilderness, Michigan|none]]
thumb|Partial distribution map of P. strobus in North AmericaP. strobus is found in the cool-temperate, hemiboreal and southern-mid boreal forests of eastern North America. It prefers well-drained or sandy soils and humid climates, but can also grow in boggy areas and rocky highlands. In mixed forests, this dominant tree towers over many others, including some of the large broadleaf hardwoods. It provides food and shelter for numerous forest birds, such as the red crossbill, and small mammals such as squirrels.
Fossilized white pine leaves and pollen have been discovered by Brian Axsmith, a paleobotanist at the University of South Alabama, in the Gulf Coastal Plain, where the tree no longer occurs.
Eastern white pine forests originally covered much of north-central and northeastern North America. Only 1% of the old-growth forests remain after the extensive logging operations from the 18th century to early 20th century.
Old-growth forests, or virgin stands, are protected in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Other protected areas with known virgin forests, as confirmed by the Eastern Native Tree Society, include Algonquin Provincial Park, Quetico Provincial Park, Algoma Highlands in Ontario, and Sainte-Marguerite River Old Forest in Quebec, Canada; Estivant Pines, Huron Mountains, Porcupine Mountains State Park, and Sylvania Wilderness Area in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, United States; Hartwick Pines State Park in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan; Menominee Indian Reservation in Wisconsin; Lost 40 Scientific and Natural Area (SNA) and Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota; White Pines State Park, Illinois; Cook Forest State Park, Hearts Content Scenic Area, and Anders Run Natural Area in Pennsylvania; and the Linville Gorge Wilderness in North Carolina, United States.
Small groves or individual specimens of old-growth eastern white pines are found across the range of the species in the USA, including in Ordway Grove, Maine; Ice Glen, Massachusetts; and Adirondack Park, New York. Many sites with conspicuously large specimens represent advanced old-field ecological succession. The tall stands in Mohawk Trail State Forest and William Cullen Bryant Homestead in Massachusetts are examples.
As an introduced species, P. strobus is now naturalizing in the Outer Western Carpathians subdivision of the Carpathian Mountains in Czech Republic and southern Poland. It has spread from specimens planted as ornamental trees.
Description
Like most members of the white pine group, Pinus subgenus Strobus, the leaves ("needles") are coniferous, occurring in fascicles (bundles) of five, or rarely three or four, with a deciduous sheath. The leaves are flexible, bluish-green, finely serrated, and long.
The seed cones are slender, long (rarely longer than that) and broad when open, and have scales with a rounded apex and slightly reflexed tip, often resinous. The seeds are long, with a slender wing, and are dispersed by wind. Cone production peaks every 3 to 5 years.
The branches are spaced about every 18 inches on the trunk with five or six branches appearing like spokes on a wagon wheel. Eastern white pine is self-fertile, but seeds produced this way tend to result in weak, stunted, and malformed seedlings. Mature trees are often 200–250 years old, and some live over 400 years. A tree growing near Syracuse, New York, was dated to 458 years old in the late 1980s and trees in Michigan and Wisconsin were dated to roughly 500 years old.
White pines will form strong, dominant roots that are similar to taproots then will later develop lateral roots from terminal shoots during propagation.
Dimensions
thumb|right|Measuring the circumference of an eastern white pine
The eastern white pine has been described as the tallest tree in eastern North America, perhaps sharing the prize with the deciduous tulip tree whose range overlaps with eastern white pine in a few areas. In natural precolonial stands, the pine was frequently reported to have grown as tall as or more. No means exist for accurately documenting the height of trees from these times, but eastern white pine may have reached this height on rare occasions. James Brown of Arniston, a forester and later Inspector of Woods and Forests, Port Elgin, Ontario, Canada wrote in 1882:
"In its native habitats this pine grows to very large dimensions. We have measured many of them as they lay felled on the ground and taking a number of them we found the stems average 150 feet long by 2 feet 9 inches diameter at 5 feet up from the bottom. This may be taken as an average of the size of the trees as they stand in their native parts ; but we have found many of them that measured 210 feet long with stems from 5 to 7 feet in diameter at 4 feet up from the bottom and on counting the annular layers on the stumps from which they were cut we found them to range between 350 and 425 which may be taken as representing the years of their age."
Even greater heights and diameters have been reported in numerous early town and county histories, lumber journals, and popular, but unverifiable, accounts such as Robert Pike's Tall Trees, Tough Men.
Total trunk volumes of the largest specimens are around , with some past giants possibly reaching . Photographic analysis of giants suggests volumes closer to .
Height
P. strobus grows about annually between the ages of 15 and 45 years, with slower height increments before and after that age range. The tallest presently living specimens are tall, as determined by the Native Tree Society (NTS). Prior to their exploitation, it was common for white pines in northern Wisconsin to reach heights of over .
The southern Appalachian Mountains have the most locations and the tallest trees in the present range of P. strobus. One survivor is a specimen known as the "Boogerman Pine" in the Cataloochee Valley of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. At tall, it is the tallest accurately measured tree in North America east of the Rocky Mountains, though this conflicts with citations for Liriodendron tulipifera. It has been climbed and measured by tape drop by the NTS. Before Hurricane Opal broke its top in October 1995, Boogerman Pine was tall, as determined by Will Blozan and Robert Leverett using ground-based measurements.
The tallest specimens in Hartwick Pines State Park in Michigan are tall.
In the northeastern USA, eight sites in four states currently have trees over tall, as confirmed by the NTS. The Cook Forest State Park of Pennsylvania has the most numerous collection of eastern white pines in the Northeast, with 110 trees measuring that height or more. The park's "Longfellow Pine" is the tallest presently living eastern white pine in the Northeast, at tall, as determined by tape drop. The Mohawk Trail State Forest of Massachusetts has 83 trees measuring or more tall, of which six exceed . The "Jake Swamp Tree" located there is tall. The NTS maintains precise measurements of it. A private property in Claremont, New Hampshire, has approximately 60 specimens that are at least , with the tallest being .
Diameter
Diameters of the larger pines range from , which translates to a circumference (girth) range of . However, single-trunked white pines in both the Northeast and Southeast with diameters over are exceedingly rare. Notable big pine sites of or less often have no more than two or three trees in the 1.2- to 1.4-m-diameter class. Common diameter of 2-3 feet.
Ecology
Cottontail, snowshoe rabbits, and porcupines can eat the bark. Red squirrels can eat the cones by extracting the seeds. Seeds are eaten by crossbills, pine siskin, and white tailed deer. The ramifications for wildlife and habitat ecology were of less concern at the time than timber-industry protection. Some white pines in Wisconsin are over 200 years old. Although widely planted as a landscape tree in the Midwestern states, native White pine is listed as "rare or uncommon" in Indiana.
Native American traditional uses
The name "Adirondack", an Iroquois word that means tree-eater, referred to their neighbors (more commonly known as the Algonquians) who collected the inner bark of P. strobus, Picea rubens, and others during times of winter starvation. The white, soft inner bark (cambial layer) was carefully separated from the hard, dark brown bark and dried. When pounded, this product can be used as flour or added to stretch other starchy products.
The white pine had aesthetic appeal to contemporary naturalists such as Henry David Thoreau ("There is no finer tree.") Beyond that, it had commercial applications. It was considered "the most sought and most widely utilized of the various forest growths of the northwest." Descriptions of its uses are quoted below from a 19th-century source: