White Pine

White (Old Field) Pine

Large old white pines like this gnarled one at Red Rocks Park are a reminder of sunnier days. These highly branched trees start their lives in the full-sunshine of a recently abandonded field. Often, white pine weevils will lay their eggs in the sunny, warm tip of the tree, and kill or deform the terminal shoot. When the side branches compete to be the leader, sometimes they all win! The result is a "wolf tree" or a tree with an "open-grown" form. They are like history books, giving us clues to the past. Next time you find a gnarled old white pine, look around you and try to imagine what the area looked like 100 years ago or more, when the tree was just supple young sapling in a sunny field.

teage