Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus) tall, drought-resistant evergreen with a wide canopy, native throughout all of New England, from Newfoundland to Georgia, west to Iowa.

The tree grows to 50 to 100 feet and is among the tallest trees of eastern North America, forming a canopy-emergent layer above adjacent hardwoods crowns in mixed stands.

White Pine is conical in form when young, but loses defined shape with age, “becoming picturesque,” per UConn’s plant database/URI.

Needles are long/thin, borne in bundles of 5 and persist for 2 years with a blue-green color. Twigs are orange-brown/resinous. Bark is thin/smooth on young stems, soon becoming furrowed and dividing into narrow, roughly rectangular blocks on older stems.

White Pine is the only native species and only long-needled conifer likely to be found at a Connecticut Christmas tree farm. The flexible branches struggle with heavy ornaments however, but are well suited for garland, popcorn and lights.

Large white pine logs were used by Native Americans to make dugout canoes. During the colonial period, White Pines fellings were regulated by several acts of Parliament to ensure a supply of masts for the sailing ships of the British Royal Navy, marking the trees with arrows to to declare them as “Kingstrees.” As a result, patriots competed during the American Revolution to see how many “Kingstrees” a single man could ax and haul.

The University of Connecticut’s Conifer Collection hosts a large number of dwarf white pine varieties cultivated by legendary botanist Sydney Waxman. Legend has it, Waxman would
drive around the state, using a .22 caliber rifle to shoot down seed-bearing cones of “witch’s brooms”, or deformities on pine trees, to create new dwarf conifer species.