Eastern White Pine

Pinus strobus, the Eastern White Pine. From a painting by Mary E. Eaton, 1917.

Eastern white pine, the most common coniferous tree in Rhode Island, is the tallest tree found in our forests. Each tree can live 200 years, and they can grow up to 150 feet tall and 3 feet in diameter. In native old-growth forests, white pines reportedly grew more than 200 feet high, and in the age of sail, they were used as masts for ocean-going ships.

Click on "Read more" to learn about our white pines and forests.

 
Naturalist/author Henry David Thoreau once climbed a white pine, and found it a rewarding experience: “It was a tall white pine on the top of a hill, and though I got well pitched I was well payed for it, for I discovered new mountains in the horizon which I had never seen before, — so much more of the earth and the heavens. I might have walked about the foot of the tree for three score years and ten, and yet I certainly should never have seen them.”

White pines can be identified by their needle bundles, which are in sets of five. The easy way to remember -- five needles, five letters in w.h.i.t.e. The cones are long and slender. The Latin name for white pine is Pinus strobus. The bark is rough and often sticky with sap.

White pine is a soft wood, easy to cut and to work with. Today it's still used for flooring, paneling, and furniture, and over time the wood gains a fine patina.

R.I. Forests

In the 1700s and 1800s, about 75 percent of R.I.'s forests were cut, as farmers cleared land for planting and grazing. With the change to an industrial economy, the forest gradually filled in the abandoned farmlands, till by the 1960s about 65 percent of the state was forested. If you go hiking in our forest, you'll often see stone walls among the trees, marking sites that once were fields.

Since the 1960s, the forest has been slowly diminishing due to sprawling suburbs, roads, and commercial development. Now the state is about 59 percent forested. Let's value the trees that remain, they may yet reveal to us new ways of seeing the world, as one did for Thoreau.

To learn more about R.I. forests, you can download a free booklet from the Department of Environmental Management, just click here. Learn more about the Eastern White Pine at the wonderful Encylopedia of Life.