Eastern White Pines grace an Upper Peninsula lake

Photo by Joseph O'Brien, USDA Forest Service, Bugwood.org

They’re gone! The leaves, they’re gone, from pretty much all but the non-natives! Michigan’s deciduous trees, shrubs and wildflowers have pretty well settled in for winter in their naked state. But, we do have some great native evergreen plants that keep their greenery and in so doing, help out our spirits in the winter.

So, for the next few entries, let’s explore some of our stalwart trees and shrubs that keep on keeping on, even in the dead of winter. Today, let’s look at the king of them, in Michigan, the state tree, the Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus).

The Eastern White Pine is a stately tree that can reach heights of up to 75-100 feet tall, with a canopy of upswept branches that may reach 50-75 feet wide. In a protected wooded setting, it can have a fairly uniform, pyramidal crown, but along Lake Michigan or some other windy setting, they have a distinctive one-sided, windswept look. The tree has a fairly rapid growth rate for the first 50 years of its life, growing 1 ½ to 2 feet per year. After that, its growth rate slows considerably, and a tree can live to between 250 and 400 years, unless it’s chopped down.

Ah yes, that part of its history. Up until the 1850s, huge expanses of the white and red pine (Pinus resinosa) grew across the northern portion of the Lower Peninsula and the Upper Peninsula, and as much as 160 billion board feet of Michigan timber was cut and shipped out of state to Eastern manufacturers and prairie towns between the years of 1840 to 1900. Unfortunately, the forests couldn’t regenerate as the small trees left to grow back were destroyed by widespread, intense fires that roared through the dried slash left behind by the loggers.

A windswept White Pine

Photo from http://www.shgresources.com/mi/symbols/tree/

Fortunately for us, the tree has hung on and remains fairly common, although nowhere near in the original numbers. It’s still lumbered, although less intensively, and is very popular as a landscape tree. Early in life, it can make a very nice, full, soft screen, but as it gets taller, the screening effect is lost because the tree typically loses its lower branches as it gets taller. What it loses as a screen, however, it starts to gain as a shade tree. It is fairly tolerant of a range of soil conditions, as long as they’re not saturated. It is also fairly shade tolerant.

The white pine is the only native pine tree in Michigan with five needles per bundle. The needles may reach up to 2.5-5 inches long and can be used as a landscaping mulch. Its cone is about 6-8 inches long. If you want to learn more about the plant, take a look at the USDA website. If you want to learn a bit more about the logging history, look at the Newaygo County Historical Archive site.

As it was such a prevalent tree prior to the mid 1800s, and since it’s native to most of eastern North America, you would figure that Native Americans would make use of various parts of it, and you’d be right. According to the University of Michigan-Dearborn Ethnobotany website, its uses ranged from treatments for colds and stomach ailments and to using its pitch to extract slivers and the poison from boils. In addition to those medicinal uses, the tree was also used for canoes, the boughs were used for bedding, and the pitch was used for caulking. It’s nice to have a tree in your yard that, in a pinch, can become a canoe.

Get out, enjoy nature, and take in the scent of a beautiful white pine on your walk. But, don't try to hug it unless you have something handy to remove the sap!

Rick is a local landscape architect with a special interest in all things natural, including native plants and the critters that eat them. You can contact him at yourland1824@gmail.com.