Today’s column (gift link) is about the white pine, specifically how it towers over a big family of forest species in Minnesota. One family made a mission out of bringing back the white pine, and learning that it’s not just the white pine that makes for a successful forest. I also give some tips for all of us to care for and help restore white pine plantations in Minnesota.
I grew up rural, but our version of the woods was the scrub brush around the family junkyard. There were pine trees and popple trees and most any tree could be crammed into one of those categories back then. Somehow I would later pass a college botany class, but it wasn’t pretty.
This endured until I moved into a real deal forest when we built our family home in Itasca County. Our oldest son fell in love with trees, and before long I was learning their proper names, if only to preserve my fatherly credibility just a few years longer. He’s now a forestry student at UW-Stevens Point, so I can no longer keep up with him.
But I did learn about many Minnesota’s tree species along the way, especially some really great ways to tell red pines from white pines.
These are both tall pine trees, easy to mix up if you pass them in a speeding car. But on the ground, or even from a good distance, you can tell them apart with relative ease.
From far away, the red pine is more conical and symmetrical in appearance. The white pine, on the other hand, is just a bit more dark and chaotic. Its branches jut out dramatically and it often has a more jagged, sweeping appearance in the wind.
Closer up, the bark tells a story. Red pines, as you might guess, have a reddish tint. White pine trunks are a more solid dark grey.
But you can count the differences in needles. Needle bunches on the red pine have just two needles, while the white pine has five. Needles themselves are also different. Red pines have more rigid needles, while the white pine needles flex more easily.
This is in keeping with the two trees’ very different strategies for surviving high winds. The red pine stands straighter and gives up few branches in a wind storm. The white pine bends a bit more and sheds branches if the wind puts on too much pressure. That’s why during heavy wind events, red pines are more apt to be knocked over than white.
Over time, the difference becomes obvious. White pines grow almost twice as tall, reaching heights of 200 feet or even much more. They’re usually cut down long before then, either for timber or because of disease, but a healthy, fully mature white pine is something to see. They’re rare now, but you only need imagine an endless forest of 300-foot white pines to know what indigenous people and European explorers saw long ago.
Could we ever, even on a small scale, bring this forest back? Yes, it is possible.
Read “Why the white pine matters in Minnesota” in the Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025 edition of the Minnesota Star Tribune.
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist and member of the editorial board for the Minnesota Star Tribune. His new book about Hibbing Mayor Victor Power and his momentous fight against the world’s largest corporation will be out soon.
