PINUS TAEDA[Loblolly Pine]

Growing zones and originThe loblolly pine is native to the Southeastern United States.

Tree profileThe evergreen loblolly pine can reach a height of up to 30 to 35 m and a trunk diameter of 50 to 100 cm. Exceptional, bigger specimens are known that may reach 50 m in height. Its needles are in bundles of three shoots and measure 12 to 22 cm in length.

The plant is monoecious and unisexual, which means that it has male and female cones on one and the same tree.The male cones are cylindrical and arranged in groups; they are yellow to yellow-brown and grow to a length of 2 to 4 cm. The fema-le cones are pale green at the start, ripening yellow to yellow-brown and, when mature, are pale or dark brown.

They reach a length of 7 to 13 cm. The winged seeds are red-brown. The bark of fully grown trees is red-brown and peels off into scaly pla-ques. The heartwood has a matt sheen and is yellowish white. The annual rings are of varying colors and lend Pinus Taeda its characteristic, decorative pattern especially when the grain is flawy.

CultivationLoblolly pines are rather undemanding and quite adaptable. They thrive even in acidic or sandy soil. The rate of growth is rapid, and the tree is often grown commercially in plantations (cf. FSC® certification).

Value as timber and furniture woodSolid pine wood is decorative, easy to split and suitable for use in interior applications, particu-larly for manufacturing country-house-style fur-niture, e.g. as cabinets (corner cabinets, war-drobes, bedroom cabinets, living-room cabinets or farmhouse cupboards); chairs and tables

(coffee tables, dining tables, garden benches, bedside tables, dining chairs or writing

desks); tall sideboards, sideboards;wall systems (add-on walls or wall units;)

Or as dressers, bookshelves, coat stands, chests of drawers, bureaus and display cases.Because the wood of pines can also be easily processed and wor-ked as veneering wood, it is used

for furniture or interior finishing in its natural and untreated form or it may

be water-seasoned, oiled, or lacquered white. This applies in particular to furniture

for the bedroom area, e.g. pine-wood beds or pine-wood cabinets.

Compared with spruce wood, pine wood has better mechanical characteristics. Thanks to its good weather resistance it is also used as buil-ding or construction timber like fir wood, whether as boards, poles, posts or piles.

Due to their low recontamination, pine boards are also suitable for hygienic cutting boards. In outdoor applications, pine wood is widely used for terrace floors, garden furniture, bicycle and pedestrian bridges, children’s playgrounds, noise barriers, fencing or in housing construction for balconies, façades, windows, gates and doors.

Significance as pioneer treesLike pussy willows and birches, pines are typical pioneer trees which, thanks to their formation of large seeds and modest soil and water require-ments, can rather quickly recolonize open spaces (after wildfires or natural disasters) and revert them to forests.

Over and above that, pines are deep-rooting plants and can thus withstand storms relatively well. In this way, in a rather short time, mono-cultural pine forests come into being, but they will be colonized by and by and dominated by other types of tree like birches, beeches and oaks.

The existence of large pine-tree populations is al-ways explained by the fact that these have been created by man.

This is because over lengthy periods of time pine trees can exist only at extreme locations with little

The loblolly pine is also known as American Southern States pine. The evergreen tree is the official State tree of the US Federal State of Arkansas. It is the tallest pine of the US Southern States pines.

soil or water, seeing that in these areas they cannot be displaced by competing tree species.

Ecological significancePine trees provide a habitat and nutritional staple for some small animals, butterflies for example (pine hawk moths, pine tree lappets, Panthea coenobite, Peribatodes secundaria or Feathered Beauty), whose caterpillars feed on pine needles and larch needles.

For that reason, pines number among the few conifers that are also suitable as

hedgerow plants for butterfly hedges.