pine

Re: pine

mikeee12345

The southern pine beetle, spruce beetle and bark beetles have made their way across most of the country.

You will see more blue stained lumber in the mills as these trees get salvaged for lumber.

Eighty percent of all "pine" trees are expected to die off from these infestations.

Re: pine

David Smith

Yes, it was a tree infested with pine beetles. The tree wasn't fully dead yet but it was a good time to bring it down. Here in the PNW we call it blued pine and most people just discard it. I find it pretty nice to turn. Here is another I did from a tree I felled last year.

Re: Fat pine?

Mike Stafford

You, of course, know that North Carolinians are called Tar Heels because of pine tar resin business that prospered in this state during the late 1700's when N.C. produced more than 70% of the pine tar and 50% of the turpentine for the colonies. Naval stores as they were called was the main industry in N.C.

Where I live was on the westernmost edge of the long leaf pine growing range. There are still long leaf pines to be found but not as abundantly as they once were. I can see three from my kitchen table as I look across the golf course.

Surprisingly these hugely tall pines weather hurricanes very well. I guess they were adapted to sway rather than break. I have seen many do just that during the hurricanes that have passed through the area. Tornadoes are a different matter as twisters do just that and twist the tops right off these towering trees.

I cannot imagine moving these timbers. I have even more trouble imagining how they were cut, processed, transported and erected to build this huge warehouse. I was pretty content with a couple of 4 foot sections from one of the smaller joists. It took two men and a boy to unload it when I got it home.

Re: pine

John K Jordan

David, that's beautiful. Nice piece!

Re: Fat pine?

Jorge

Mike, in my tree planting days, we planted mostly loblolly pine (short leaf yellow pine), the long leaf yellow pine, a much superior tree, was a distant second, we planted in all states on the east coast from Virginia to Texas, The reason we planted 80% loblolly and 20% long leaf, had nothing to do with forestry, it was interest rates.

Loblolly pine is planted commercially like all other trees, in an 8' grid, 18 years later, it gets decimated, they take every other tree out, favoring the straight trees, and that harvest is for toilet paper, the remaining trees with the open canopy grow taller and fatter and get harvested at 35 years, this time saw logs, some as is, most for Pressure treated and the smaller stuff again for toilet paper

Foresters with vision planted long leaf and some other plants to integrate quail habitat with pine forest management. To please hunters. But at least they planted long leaf yellow pine. It takes about 10 years more that loblolly pine to reach commercial size growth and it is very long lived and can attain huge size, of superior timber, and it is a joy to behold.

Very few hardwoods were planted, and only in soil conservation schemes

I wish there was enough life on me to go plant another million trees...