Eastern White Pine
Pinus strobus · Pinaceae · Evergreen · also called white pine
The eastern white pine is the tallest conifer in eastern North America and the easiest pine to identify: count the needles in a bundle. Five needles, and the word W-H-I-T-E has five letters. Every other eastern pine has two or three.
Quick facts
- Arrangement
- needle cluster
- Leaf
- Soft flexible blue-green needles in bundles of five, three to five inches long.
- Bark
- Smooth grey-green on young trees, becoming deeply furrowed into broad dark ridges with age.
- Fruit
- Long slender cones, four to eight inches, often curved and usually sticky with resin.
- Height
- 50–110 ft
How to confirm it
- Five needles per bundle — count them. This alone identifies it among eastern pines.
- Needles soft and flexible rather than stiff and sharp.
- Branches in distinct whorls, one whorl per year of growth.
- Long slender resinous cones.
What it is confused with
One observation settles each of these.
Red pine has two stiff needles per bundle that snap cleanly when bent.
Scots pine has two twisted blue-green needles and distinctive orange upper bark.
Where it grows
Northeastern North America and the Appalachians, in forests and widely planted.
Start here: opposite or alternate?
Look at where the leaves join the twig. Are they in matched pairs directly across from each other, or staggered one after another? The vast majority of trees are alternate, so finding an opposite tree removes almost everything else in one step.
In North America, opposite-leaved trees are remembered as MAD Cap Horse: Maple, Ash, Dogwood, Caprifoliaceae (viburnums and elders), and Horse chestnut. That is very nearly the whole list.
Check partway along a healthy twig rather than at the tip, where crowding can make alternate leaves look paired. And check more than one twig.