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Pinus resinosa Ait. Red pine
Also known as: Norway pine.
Habitat
Red pine grows mostly on well-drained sandy or gravelly soils. It may occur in pure stands or in mixture with eastern white pine and several other species on more moist soils, or with jack pine on drier soils. It is shade intolerant, so does not establish beneath much cover.
Crown of young tree
Form
Red pine grows to heights of up to 25 m and to stem diameters of up to 70 cm. It has a neatly conical crown through its younger stages, and later forms a short, broad, oval crown. With increasing age, the crown tends to become flat-topped and irregular.
Morphology
Like all pines, red pine produces two kinds of shoots. Short shoots, or microshoots, grow out once and carry the leaves (except on a first- or second-year seedling). Long shoots carry the microshoots, produce buds, and form the branches. Thus, along each new long shoot, beyond a small section that remains bare, there are many microshoots borne in a series of long spirals and, at the end of the long shoot, a whorl of lateral long-shoot buds, and a terminal long-shoot bud. Each microshoot has a sheath of bud scales extending about 1 cm out along the bases of two needle-like leaves. The leaves are dark green, 8–15 cm long, sharp pointed, half round in cross section, and finely and sharply toothed along the two margins.
The buds are chestnut brown, pointed, and resinous
with loosely overlapping hairy scales. The twigs
or long shoots are shiny, orange to reddish brown,
and somewhat grooved. There are small raised scars scattered along
the basal bare portion of the long shoot and at the base of each
microshoot where there was once a bud scale.
Pollen cones occur along the lower parts of many weaker
long shoots in place of microshoots. These emerge, extend to lengths
of up to 25 mm, and shed pollen as long-shoot elongation takes place.
They then shrivel and fall. Seed cones occur in
place of new lateral long-shoot buds at the tips of more vigorous
elongating long shoots. They are purple at first, when their scales
are spread apart to permit pollen to access the ovules. The scales
then close together and the cones grow in their first year to small
brown structures 8–10 mm in diameter. The next season, the
seed cones become green and grow to full size when, as they ripen,
they become brown. They may open to release seeds in the second
fall, or in the following early spring. The mature seed cones are
4–6 cm long, ovoid when closed, and nearly orbicular when
open, and have thickened brown scales with paler smooth ends.
The bark is reddish or pinkish brown, and loosely scaly when young. It is thick and deeply furrowed between broad, flat, pale reddish-brown, scaly plates when old.
Notes
Red pine is easily distinguished from the other native pines by leaf length and number of leaves per microshoot. Jack pine also has two leaves per microshoot, but they are rarely more than 3 cm long. Eastern white pine has leaves 4–6 cm long, but there are five per microshoot. Red pine might be confused with the introduced Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) because the young bark is somewhat similarly colored, but the leaves of Scots pine are much shorter and often bluish green. The introduced Austrian pine (Pinus nigra Arn.) is less easy to distinguish because its leaves are of similar length to those of red pine, and it also has two leaves per microshoot. However, its leaves tend to be less brittle than those of red pine, so they don’t break as cleanly when bent. Its buds are pale brown and usually whitened by resin, and its twig surfaces are yellowish green to brown and thus quite different from red pine.
Red pine is used extensively for poles and piling. The wood is relatively hard and can be used for structural timbers. Red pine is often planted as an ornamental.