I have never seen a pure stand of Red Pine despite many years of hiking in the North woods. Red Pines always seem to be mixed with broadleaved trees or with White Pines. In his iconic book “Trees of Eastern and Central North America”, Donald Peattie confirmed my observations. “From aboriginal times to the present the Red Pine has been the companion of the graceful White Pine, that queen of the forest.”

This painting is based on photographs I took of a grove of Red Pines mixed with White Pines. The trees with dark bark in the background are White Pines (Pinus strobus), companions of the Red Pines (Pinus resinosa) as Peattie wrote. On the right side of the painting there is an old white pine trunk which may have been the mother of all the young White Pines in the scene.

The old Red Pine in the foreground is about 2 feet in diameter. But even this one is a youth compared to Red Pines that have been logged in the past, with individuals as tall as 80 feet high and up to 3 feet in diameter. What history brought this grove to its present state in the forest succession? I would guess that individual specimens vary from 50 to 100 years old. Was it logged back then? The old, rotted stumps would argue against that (in the middle of the painting). There is no evidence of clean cuts on the stumps. They are also blackened, and they are not very large. Perhaps they were Logged, maybe 150 to 200 years ago, followed by a young forest which then burned down?

The ground is covered by Bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum) that forms large colonies by underground rhizomes. Bracken is one of the oldest and widest spread ferns. Fossils of Bracken over 55 million years have been found. It’s a tough plant that can endure the acid soil created by the pine needles. For the painter it is the ideal plant to place in front of and behind the trees to show depth.

Notice the yellow-orange needles hanging on beneath the new green shoots. These are last year’s needles in the process of dropping off the trees. The trees are not sick. We call these trees “evergreen” because the old leaves hang on to the tree until the new green shoots are well formed. The result is that the tree always has fresh green leaves although the leaves are different ones each year.