Eastern white pine (which is also referred to by some people in the Unites States as the northern white pine), is a beautiful species. It grows all over eastern Canada and around the Great Lakes, and also throughout the northeastern seaboard of the United States. Ironically, even though it is sometimes called the northern white, it doesn't really grow well north of New Brunswick, central Newfoundland, or southern Ontario. Here's a map showing the typical range, thanks to Wikipedia:
Eastern white pine is a powerful species. In mature forests, it is typically the largest tree that might be found, and often towers well above other species around it. This tree can very easily grow to be more than forty meters tall (130 feet), and some historical specimens were reported to exceed sixty meters. Even forty meters is very tall for the east coast! There are a number of old eastern whites on our Charles Clark Forest Reserve property in Nova Scotia, and I'm going to try to get an accurate measurement of their height soon. Thanks to the use of drone technology, it will be very quick and easy to get a measurement that should be accurate to within one meter. A few of these old giants were blown down several years ago by Hurricane Juan, but a number of them survived and still thrive today. Thankfully, they recently survived the impact of Hurricane Dorian too.
Although height is everyone's favorite metric when it comes to talking about big trees, let's not forget about DBH, which stands for "diameter at breast height." A mature eastern white can measure between 1.0 and 1.5 meters across (that's about three to five feet, for our American followers). Stand beside one, or try to wrap your arms around it, and you'll be humbled. What's even more impressive about this species is its lifespan. Mature trees often live 200-250 years, and can sometimes live for more than four centuries. Some native Americans referred to this type of tree as the "Tree of Peace," and Henry David Thoreau remarked, "There is no finer tree."
There's a great historical story about eastern white pines. In the 1700's, these trees were often used as masts for ships. Government representatives (early day timber cruisers) would search for the best specimens in the forests and etch a special mark (a broad arrow) into the bark of the tree. These trees were then designated as property of the crown, and anyone who cut one down (and got caught doing so) was ostensibly given a fine for "stealing" the tree. This lead to a backlash in the American colonies that was arguably even more significant than the tea tax or the Stamp Act, and eventually led to the Pine Tree Riot of 1772. This incident was significant in the lead-up to the American Revolution. You can learn more about the Pine Tree Riot at this wiki link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Tree_Riot
The eastern white pine is the provincial tree of Ontario. Despite its majesty, it doesn't always grow symmetrically. If growing in an area exposed to heavy winds, the tree will often have very short branches on the side exposed most chronically to the wind, and large drooping branches on the leeward side of the trunk. This happens to other species too, but eastern white is probably more noted for it because these trees tower above other species, so this characteristic is more common in eastern whites. Many of you probably know of Tom Thomson's famous painting, called "The Jack Pine." You may not know that his first famous Canadian outdoor painting, entitled, "Byng Inlet, Georgian Bay," features three eastern white pine trees. I won't post the image here due to potential copyright issues, but you can find it easily with a google search.
When young eastern white pines are growing, they can survive in any kind of soil, although they generally prefer sandy soils. However, they're versatile, and can still survive in moist receiving zones. They grow best when exposed to significant amounts of sunlight, but they're also very shade tolerant when young. This lets seedlings become established as juvenile trees in understory plantations. For this reason, eastern white pine seedlings do best when planted in open ground or in mature canopies with some open space (two extremes), but generally don't do well when planted in dense young stands with thick juvenile brush.
Different pine species tend to have different numbers of needles in their clusters, consistent to each species. Some pines are two-needle, some are three-needle, and some are five-needle. The eastern white, like most other white pines around the world, is a five-needle pine. These needles grow to be as long as fifteen centimeters on mature trees, and stay on the tree for between one and four years before they fall off and are replaced with new growth.
For those of you who are more intimately familiar with forestry and arboriculture, two of the main diseases that hit eastern whites are Amillaria root rot and white pine blister rust. The biggest insect pest that causes problems for this species is the white pine weevil. The white pine weevil attacks eastern white pine in eastern North America, but tends to target spruce trees in western North America.
Here's a photo of one of the large eastern white pines on our Charles Clark Forest Reserve project in Nova Scotia. It towers above the surrounding canopy! Thankfully, Hurricane Dorian didn't blow it over.
Now you know a lot about one of our favorite tree species. We'll leave you with this photo of some of the thousands of eastern white pine seedlings that we planted in 2019! They're a very important part of our species mix when we're building our community forests and creating forest reserves for carbon capture. You can learn more by going to our website and looking at our progress report page.
Thanks for reading!
- Jonathan Clark
www.replant-environmental.ca
Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests. We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases. We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world. If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page. Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!
Teachers are welcome to use content from this post for their classes. If you know a teacher who might like to use this information, please share it with them! The more that people learn about trees, the better our world will be.
To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website. Thanks so much for your interest!
Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects. Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.
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