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Eastern White Pine

Pinus strobus

Seneca Name

Oso:ah

Common Name

"White Pine," "Northern White Pine"

Location

Earth is Our Mother Trail

GPS Coordinates

N 42°57.854' W077°25.002'

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This evergreen is one of the tallest trees in eastern forests. It has been prized for its lumber and pitch. The leaves, bark, twigs, and pitch have medicinal uses. The Eastern White Pine is the Tree of Peace of the Hodinöhsö:ni' peoples and is a key element of the history and stories concerning the forming of the Iroquois Confederacy. The needles of this tree come in bundles of 5 and are symbolic of the original 5 nations (Seneca, Onondaga, Cayuga, Oneida, Mohawk) of the Iroquois Confederacy. The white pine is the largest northeastern conifer reaching 100' although more than 150' was common in pre-colonial virgin stands of these trees. This evergreen tree has a straight trunk and a crown of horizontal branches - 1 row added per year. The needles are 2.5-5" long, 5 in a bundle, slender, and blue-green. The bark is gray and smooth becoming rough, thick, and deeply furrowed into narrow scaly ridges with age. The cones are narrow and 4-8" long. The white pine was one of the most valuable trees of the Northeast with its lumber was used for a variety of purposes including ship masts.

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