White Pine has always been special to me. Where I grew up in the Saco River watershed, and where I currently live in New York, White Pine is one of the predominant evergreens. A fast grower, the White Pines can become giant guardian trees. As a child, a huge, split White Pine was my first tree friend. It grew at the edge of our driveway, towering over the front yard and the street. The split was many feet above ground and fragrant, sticky pitch oozed from it, building up over the years. From my child’s point of view, the tree’s heart was where the pitch came from. I would have conversations with this tree, go to it when I was sad and pour my heart out. And somehow the tree understood and comforted me. We sold this property when I was about 13, and the new owners wanted to cut my White Pine, fearful that it would fall in a strong gust of wind. My father was a tree surgeon and I implored him to talk with the new owners and reassure them that the tree had been there for decades and was no danger. I threatened to climb the tree and not come down until the tree was safe. Daddy did reach an agreement to prune the tree so that if it did get blown over it wouldn’t land on the house. And so the tree was spared.
The house where we lived in Fryeburg, Maine for over 30 years also had a huge White Pine at the edge of the driveway, though it has a single, straight trunk. It, too, is a strong guardian. And down back there were many more White Pines, some amazingly huge with trunks as big as old growth, the biggest of which grows in the middle of the field. This particular tree has a very special spirit, so much so that our neighbors called it “The Loving Tree”. I saw this tree every day from our back windows, and it’s in many of the pictures I took of the garden and backyard including the two illustrating this blog.
White Pine (and other evergreens) make wonderful medicine and soothing, healing salves and creams. You can make a delicious syrup of twigs, bark, and needles: make a nice, strong infusion, strain, add a cup of sugar for every 1 1/2 cups of infusion, simmer, uncovered until the syrup is as thick as you like. Pour into bottles and store in the refrigerator. This can be used as you would any syrup. It’s also excellent for sore throats (with a little lemon) and colds, can be used to sweeten tea, or as the basis for sparkling drinks, with or without spirits.
You can make a fragrant, healing oil from the needles, twig, bark (shave the bark from the branches using a sharp knife), and (in spring) the tips of White Pine, Spruce, and Fir, which can then be made into salves, creams, and even used in cooking. In fact, Spruce tip oil is coveted by some gourmet chefs. If you have both Pine and Spruce, make your oils (tip or otherwise) separately, so you can appreciate the distinctive fragrance of each.
Long before Europeans arrived, Native Americans, ate the inner bark of White Pines in winter, and saved colonists’ lives by introducing them to White Pine needle tea, an excellent source of Vitamin C. The pitch, which oozes from wounds in the trees, is an excellent medicine for coughs and colds, as well as for cuts and wounds. Its purpose is to heal the tree’s wound, protecting it from disease and insects. It can do the same for us as it has strong antiseptic, antifungal qualities. I have made some wonderful Pine pitch salve by carefully harvesting the pitch (it can be hard, runny, clear, yellow, dark – it doesn’t matter – don’t take too much as the tree needs it too), melting it with a little olive oil, straining it through cheese cloth to remove any bits of bark, then adding beeswax to make a salve. This is an excellent drawing salve as well, for splinters, bites, even pimples. The process of finding and harvesting the pitch is one of my favorite things to do, and I am so appreciative of the generosity of these magnificent Guardians.