The White Fine —Pinus Strobus 
TN many respects the White Pine is the 
most important timber tree which the 
American continent produces. It is pre¬ 
eminently the tree whose lumber has the 
qualities adapting it to the greatest variety 
of uses. During recent years, however, the 
available supply has become more and more 
limited so that the price has rapidly risen 
and the lumber can no longer be used for 
many of the purposes to which it was 
formerly applied. Original forests of this 
tree are becoming scarce and where they 
exist in centres of population they are places 
of pilgrimage, as in the case of the famous 
white pine grove at Carlisle, Massachusetts. 
The White Pine has such distinctive 
characteristics that the tree is known to every¬ 
one who has paid the slightest attention to 
the plant world. It is at once distinguished 
at a distance from the Norway Pine and the 
Pitch Pine by the comparative fineness of 
its foliage, the slender needles, arranged in 
clusters of five, being borne along the sides of 
comparatively slender branches that sweep 
out horizontally with their tips commonly 
curving upwards. As seen close at hand 
these needles show two or three distinct 
whitish lines on the lower surfaces as well as 
a finely serrated margin. 1 he young 
twigs are brownish, more or less covered with 
a fine pubescence, while the older twigs are 
smooth and shining. 1 he cones are very 
characteristic, being long and comparatively 
slender with their scales enlarged toward the 
outer end but rather thin at the tip. The 
winged seeds are light brown in color. 
The White Pine is essentially a Northern 
tree, its original range extending from New¬ 
foundland to Ontario and Southern Mani¬ 
toba, thence going southward to Minnesota, 
Iowa, Michigan and Ohio and following the 
Allegheny mountains into Georgia. In many 
parts of this territory primeval forests of 
White Pine formerly covered vast areas, but 
these have been almost wholly cut down. 
Much attention has of late been given to 
reforesting some of these areas and the 
White Pine is deservedly popular for forest 
planting as well as for use in landscape 
gardening. 
