As stated, it is the queen of our native Indiana pines.Planting a tree is an action full of hope. Today most of its use is for cabinets, carving blocks and in home interiors where it adds a touch of grace to someone’s home. It was once used in the masts of ships, for window sashes, doors and in several kinds of furniture. The wood of a white pine while light weight is straight grained and is a pretty white or light brown color. Its cones are also quite large and are said to look like the index finger of a person but are much longer. It has long needles that are often inches in length and are an attractive blue-green color. The eastern white pine can grow to be a very large tree up to 120 feet in height with a large diameter. Today, they are found around old home sites and also around churches and parks in a number of Hoosier locations. Several years ago a man in an old wagon traveled over southern Indiana selling white pine trees. It has been widely planted in a number of locations and it’s difficult to know where it is a native or has been planted in the past. It is native in a few counties in Hoosierland - a few in northwestern Indiana, some more in the rugged west-central Hoosier counties where you can also find the Hemlock tree growing, and some other counties in southern Indiana. The queen of our Indiana pine trees is the eastern white pine. The wood of this pine is of little economic value in Indiana. The Virginia pine looks a lot like the jack pine and has also been planted in the strip mine lands of southwestern Indiana. Several of these sites have been acquired by the Indiana Chapter of the Nature Conservancy, are open to the public and are managed by both the state and conservancy as nature preserves. The knobs near New Albany have native Virginia pine trees. A nature preserve has been set aside in Clark State Forest where a number of these pines still grow in a wild landscape. Clark County State Forest is a good place to see the Virginia pine and the rugged terrain that is a feature of this section of our state. The Virginia pine is a southern tree that is only native in extreme southern Hoosierland in a few counties along what is known as the Knobstone Escampment, a rugged landscape of high hills that are often rounded in shape and are quite scenic and picturesque. Its seeds germinate after a fire, and dense thickets may form in burned over land where a lot of jack pines have been planted. It does have some use as railroad ties, posts and as pulpwood. Its wood is little used in Indiana as it is close grained and very weak in texture. The jack pine is a rather small tree that is usually less than 50 feet in height. In other sections of Indiana, especially on old mined out lands this tree species has been widely planted to live long enough to allow hardwood trees to take over, giving this segment of Indiana a more natural look. All border Lake Michigan - you’ll find native jack pines in a narrow band of land in the sand dunes that extend near the lake. These are Lake, Porter and Laporte counties. The jack pine is a tree of the northlands and only is found in three northwestern Hoosier counties. Other species of pine trees have been planted over the years in strip mined and abandoned areas and now seem to be a part of our natural landscape, but these three pines are the only native ones we have. They are the eastern white pine, jack pine and Virginia pine that is also sometimes know as scrub pine. Indiana has three species of native pine trees that have very restricted locations in our state.
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