![]() It is both easily transported (the cut trees float very well!) and easily worked. The wood of the white pine is light but very long grained and strong. ![]() ![]() Large specimens of white pines were labeled in the colonial forests as property of the king and his Royal British Navy. Its great height and straight growth form was in great demand for ship masts. The white pine was the most valuable timber tree in the virgin forests of America. Individual variations in vigor and fitness and external, sculpting forces like wind and fire kept these pure stands of white pine in a dynamic equilibrium of stress and re-growth and, thus, sustained the pure white pine “climax” forest ecosystem. They primarily consisted of large numbers of medium-large, 200 year old trees. The pineries contained a relative small number of “dominant” trees (i.e. Periodic fires in these seasonally very dry sites also help to remove potentially competing tree species that are less fire resistant than white pines. ![]() A potential pinery site needed to be “excessively well drained” in order to both provide the periods of time of high moisture needed for the growth of the white pine and also periods of extremely dry conditions that curtailed competition from other, less drought resistant tree species. Pure stands of white pine (“pineries”) were never common even in the pre-settlement forests. White pines typically grow in cool, moist climates and are most often found in forests intermixed with many other species of trees including red pine, northern red oak, red maple, eastern hemlock, chestnut oak, white oak and more. White pines live for 200 to 450 or more years and can become because of their great heights and longevity dominant emergent trees in a canopy of hemlocks and hardwoods. Trees that were 150 feet tall and 40 inches in trunk diameter were common in the virgin forests of America. White pines regularly reach 100 feet in height but there have been a few especially vigorous individual trees that soared up and even over 200 feet. These locations reflect the preference of the species for moist yet well drained soils in which to grow. It grows in a variety of conditions but was once an important component of the untouched forests of Western Pennsylvania especially along rivers and streams and in the soils that formed from sand and gravel out-washes generated by the last glaciers that touched the northern parts of our state. The white pine is the tallest tree in the eastern North American forest. One hundred and twenty of these pines are over 150 feet tall, and a few have been estimated to be over 500 years old! All of these trees, named or not, are spectacular examples of what a white pine can be and, also, what the white pines of our state once were. There are a number of other massively girthed white pines scattered about in the protected space of Cook Forest. Nearby is the “Seneca Pine” which is “only” 172 feet tall but its incredible trunk diameter of four feet makes it easily the largest tree by volume in Pennsylvania. The Longfellow Pine is over 180 feet tall and is estimated to be 300 years old. It was really quite uncomfortable bending my neck so far back to look up the trunk of this tree! ( Click here to listen to an audio version of this blog!)Ī couple of years ago I was standing in Cook Forest in front of the “Longfellow Pine.” There was no marker or sign that told me that this was the Longfellow, but I inferred that it was from its astonishing height.
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