Pinus virginiana

Common Names:(Collingwood and Brush, 1978)

Scrub Pine
Virginia Pine

Higher Taxa:(Vidakovic, 1991)

Class: Pinatae
Order: Pinales
Family: Pinaceae
Subfamily: Pinoideae
Tribe: Pineae
Genus: Pinus
Species: virginiana

PICTURES:
For a picture of the species Pinus virginianaclick here, or please visit the web site of The University of Wisconsin-Madison.

IDENTIFICATION:
P. virginiana was first identified by Miller. Its needles are grayish-green and in bundles of 2; they range from 1 and a half to three inches in length. The bark is dark brown, smooth on young trees and becoming scaly as it ages. The cones are "narrowly conical when closed and ovoid when open" (Grimm, 1983). For a picture of a cone from Pinus virginiana click here and visit a site from the Ohio Division of Forestry. Young P. virginiana are "roughly pyramidal in form and grow in dense stands".(Collingwood and Brush, 1978) As they age the top becomes flat on a somewhat short trunk with long horizontal branches. Heights usually range from 30 to 40 feet with a diameter of about 18 inches at breast height. Rare trees reach heights of 110 feet with diameters of 3 feet at breast height. P. virginiana reaches maturity in about 50 to 100 years, and rarely live longer than 50 years.(Collingwood and Brush, 1978)

HOW TO ENCOUNTER:
P. virginiana must have full sunlight to grow. For this reason, it is usually crowded out of the areas with moist, fertile soil where it survives best. Instead, P. virginiana can be found in dry rocky places, or in poor sandy soils. It can be found "from Long Island and the sand barrens of New jersey to northern Alabama, and westward on shale hills and mountain bases across the Alleghenies to eastern Kentucky and Ohio".(Collingwood and Brush, 1978)

ENEMIES:
P. virginiana's biggest enemy is fire. Its thin bark and shallow root system make it an easy target. It will probably never risk a serious threat of extinction from competition because of its ability to live in poor soil where competition is minimum.(Collingwood and Brush, 1978)

HISTORY:
P. virginiana is brittle, course-grained, and knotty so it is rarely used for lumber. Instead, it is used for pulp and railroad ties. It is seldom used for an ornametal tree with its flat top and scraggly crown. Its value is its ability to live in poor soil, in these places it provides forest cover and can help prevent erosion.(Duncan and Duncan, 1988) (Grimm, 1983) Early settlers used burned the wood for tar and charcoal.(Collingwood and Brush, 1978)

GEOGRAPHY:

Table I: North American Distribution of Pinus virginiana