Imagine your a British colonist stepping off the boat, seeing the New England landscape for the first time.  What immediately strikes you are the enormous eastern white pine trees towering over head - some two hundred feet tall and trunks measuring eight feet in diameter.

Recognizing this tremendous resource, England established a “Broad Arrow Policy" in 1691, decreeing that trees twenty-four inches or more in diameter and grew within three miles of water belonged to the Royal Navy for use as ship masts.  Such trees were blazed with the “mark of the broad arrow”.  Mast road in Durham, and indeed mast roads in all seacoast towns were used to convey these massive trees to the ships that would carry them back to Europe.  White pine was logged heavily in the 18th and 19th centuries for masts as well as building materials and furniture.  In the 17th and 18th centuries virtually every building erected by Colonial Americans was constructed with eastern white pine... inside and out.  Regeneration after the early logging was poor because of the lack of seed trees and the destruction of remaining seedlings and saplings by fire.  Very few uncut stands remain of these "old growth" forest trees*.

Squirrels, chipmunks and mice feed on the seeds and soft needles. Inner bark is a preferred winter food of porcupine and deer browse the twigs. Rabbits may eat the bark of young trees. The seeds are eaten by red squirrels and many birds. Snowshoe hares, white-tailed deer, and cottontails browse the foliage; the bark is eaten by various mammals. Young black bear cubs use large white pines to climb to safety.  Bald eagles build nests in living white pine, usually at a main branch located below the crown top. White pine, especially those with broken tops, provide valuable habitat for cavity-nesting wildlife*.  For additional information regarding the biological and ecological characteristics of eastern white pine, click here.

The Indians were said to have used the inner bark as an emergency food source. The whitish resin which seeps out of the wounds of this tree was mixed with beeswax by the Iroquois and used to seal the seams of their canoes*.

The state tree and flower of Maine are the eastern white pine and its cone, respectively.

The tree pictured here is growing directly north of Murkland hall.  Eastern white pine represents 17% of the campus tree population -  one doesn't have to roam far to see other white pines!  A more biodiverse landscape would contain no more than 5% of a single species.  The "Paul Bunyan" tree, a 50.5" diameter eastern white pine, is located in the College Woods Natural Area.
 

* Courtesy of http://www.rook.org/earl/bwca/nature/trees/pinusstrob.html