White Pine Trees Provide Canopy and Carpet

There are few places on earth as silent or as fragrant as a grove of white pines. Showering down from above, the trees’ soft needles form a springy, thick carpet suffused with the bracing smell of pine resin. Mature pine groves have been accurately described as cathedral-like, the trees’ spires forming a dense canopy that effectively blocks out direct light and much ambient noise. Tangibly mysterious places, groves of pines frequently shelter wintering wildlife like owls and small mammals. Winter seems to be just a little more forgiving under the pine boughs.

To most 21st-century viewers, even a single mature white pine (Pinus strobus) has a grace and majesty worth protecting, but colonists did not share this perspective. Uncut forests were still abundant in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and white pines were viewed primarily as a commodity, harvested like other products.

The British especially coveted these trees for ship masts. The white pine was straight, and the wood was resinous, light and durable. The largest, straightest pines were claimed by the crown and marked with the “king’s broad arrow” — three strokes of a hatchet creating a spearhead design. Colonists chafed at what they considered an unfair intrusion on their property rights and revolted in the Pine Tree Riot of 1772. The tree we see today as a symbol of peace and stability once represented angry sedition.

When George Washington commissioned six schooners in 1775 to interfere with British shipping, he had them sail under the Appeal to Heaven flag, which featured a single pine dominating a white background. Our nation was beginning to understand the magnitude and the potential of its natural resources, and was flaunting them before the British.

In today’s New York City, it is far more common to find an isolated white pine in our woodlands than a dense grove. There are, however, some places where pines, either natural or planted, can be found in good numbers. Forest Park in Queens has a lovely old grove, as well as several smaller, younger plantings. There are also white pines at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, the product of Lady Bird Johnson’s Beautification of America program.

White pines are easy to identify in the field, with needles that are thin and pliant, setting them apart from many other Northeastern pines. The needles are grouped into bunches, or fascicles, of five each, and one easy-to-remember tree-ID trick is to count them by spelling out “w-h-i-t-e.” White pine cones can reach six inches in length, and they are frequently covered with a fragrant, sticky resin.

Enjoy their scent cautiously; they’re harmless, but it can take some serious washing to remove the sap from a child’s fingers or nose.

Not particularly salt-tolerant, many white pines along the coast suffered badly as a result of Hurricane Sandy. Some are still recovering almost two years later; others have been replaced by seedlings, which, with luck, will grow to adulthood no longer subject to the crown’s whims or shipbuilders’ axes.