Got a huge (much bigger than it looks in pics for some reason) pine tree down in the woods by my house. One of the many leftover gifts from Sandy I haven't hit yet. I have to get 2 maples and an red oak out of the way before I can even get the tractor to this one, but I've been eyeballing it since sandy. Actually, driving me nuts thinking about it laying there! (Something wrong with me!). Anyway, what kind of Pine is this? You can see from where it is split open, the wood is yellowish in color. I'm used to seeing more of a white colored pine wood, and the bark looks a bit different than the normal pine around my area (Long Island). Thanks for ID help in advance!
Any needles still attached? Looks like there are a few. The number in each clump is usually key to identifying the tree.
If you can find an intact needle cluster should have 2 needles per cluster. But I think thewoodlands has it - Scots/Scotch pine
I would say either Scots Pine or Pitch Pine. This is based on where you live. Pitch Pine likes sandy soils and Long Island is one big sandy deposit from the last Ice Age. Red Pine is more of a northern tree and seems to grow straighter than the aforementioned two. One key indicator of Pitch Pine is that it grows needles and branches from apical buds on the trunk if they get enough sun exposure similar to the picture. Scots Pine does not do this.
Well, there is not much sun in the location as it's pretty wooded. And, there is/was NOTHING straight on this tree. No sref ou can see from the pics, but it was all over the place, tangled up in itself, and I mean before it was blown over. The location is 100 yards from the beach, so yes, it is VERY sandy. And SANDY blew it over becasue of the sandy soil which does not allow trees to bite in very well, coincedentally!
FYI, I can see the tree from my 3rd floor loft window, which is where I store my rifles and amo. Anyone found trespassing the area,...... Will be .
I do not think it is Scots Pine. Scots Pine should have some orange-colored bark on the upper trunk. The first photo shows some orange color, but I think that is due to the setting sun more than the color of the bark. Overall the tree in the photo appears to have dark, platy bark which suggests Pitch Pine. Virginia Pine looks similar, but Virginia Pine tends to have a lot more cones held on the branches for years, which are smaller than Pitch pine cones. I say Pitch Pine. Pitch Pine is good firewood, in my opinion, similar to other 'yellow' pines.
It does look a lot like pitch pine, too....but I don't see the clusters of needles like the pitch pine in my backyard has. I wish I saw Machria's tree when it had needles on it.....that'd help nail it...
Based on the sandy soils, proximity to the beach and the Smilax (green thorny vine) growing near it in trunk 1 resize, I'm going to go with Pitch Pine. There's a ton of it on Cape Cod, in the Albany Pine Barrens and the New Jersey Pine barrens.. I imagine Long Island has a fair amount too.. Tough tree, but only grows as tall as the environments allows. There are some live ones in the background. See if you can pull any characteristics from those or see apical sprouting..
There are ALOT of pine cones on the thing(see the branches1 pic) and they are small round pine cones, not elongated oval shaped ones as normally found. Maybe that helps a bit? I'm going to get some close pics of the needles on it first thing in am, will post late morning...
If it has 2 needles per group it's a Scots Pine. If it has 3 needles or more per group, it's Pitch Pine. I'm still putting this month's paycheck on Pitch Pine!!
Ok, so some more close up pics from this morning for ya. This aught to settle it. Stuckinmuck, I'm trying to figure out what you mean by "2 needles or 3 needles..."? If you mean the offshoots of the groupings of needles, then it looks like it has 3, 3 offshoots of thingy's with a bunch of needles attached. Is that what you mean? Great learning experience for me, thanks guys. My tree knowledge has been Oak, Maple, White Birch and "Pine" tree, all easily identifyable. Now I know what a Black Locust is, and would love to learn the different pines, especially the ones I'm about to cut and process! So do these pics help? You can see it is loaded with cones!
I guess you could call the grouping of needles a cluster and the cluster has one attaching point to the branch. If you have 3 per cluster, it's pitch pine.. looks similar to this pic from wikipedia..
