yellow pine

[ely]

i have a question for the more informed. i live in se okla. we have pinetrees here and lots of them. i saw them all the time. the questions is, are yellow pine native to this area, or are they from only further southeast. if they are here how do i differenciate between the many pines that i do have.

i looked through the search on yellow pine and now i have a headache and still no real understanding of the tree. it did look to me that the longleaf is a yellow pine and i do not believe i have those here from the descr. and pictures i seen. thanks for the help in advance.

[Jeff]

Well, I cant tell you exactly what you need to know but I am sure some can though and will. What I do know I learned from Mr. Tom and he told me that Southern Yellow pine grows across the Southern United States to about Texas to the west. It not one tree but a group of related trees including longleaf shortleaf  loblolly and slash. I think Slash is what Tom has planted on the front of his property but I know he has long leave growing along his drive way and had loblolly in the back

[ely]

i was thinking yellow pine was of several varieties, i am pretty sure we have some of those here but i will have to be sure first. i have an opportunity to cut some for several cstomers projects, but i have to be certain of what i am selling them this time. most folks just say they want pine,and by golly i have pine. these folks specified yellow pine.

i have some very large pine on my property that folks around here call bull pine, this is a name that i can find nowhere. could it be a local name. thanks

[Texas Ranger]

If you have SYP it is probably shortleaf pine.  On the other hand, it could be some species planted by companies or individuals.  Take a look at short leaf and see if it fits.

http://forestry.about.com/library/tree/blshortp.htm

[ely]

TR, the pine on my property has been growing there along time now, before the timber companies started planting really. i have a stand of pine that is the engineered slash pine or loblolly that i got from a paper company, i planted it myself and it has grown fast in 12 years or so. but it is very weak in strentgh when compared to the local stuff.

i will go over tonite and confirm the number of leaves and the length and look at the bark too. i am going to say it is shortleaf just from looking at that info. thanks again for the help.

[Tom]

In the Southeast, Bullpine is usually a Loblolly.  It gets called that because of its size.  Most of the Large ones are in wet swamps and river bottoms.  In this case size means diameter.

I don't deal with shortleaf, but the premiere pine is Long Leaf.  In descending order the value of the other logs in quality is Slash, Shortleaf and Loblolly.

Fast growth means wide early wood.  Strength is usually identified with tight rings from slow growing trees.  The new trees, given optimum growing conditions, produce very wide growth rings.  Loblolly is the fastest growing.

Once the lumber is sawed, there is no distinction amongst the four species.  They are all Southern Yellow Pine.

[Bro. Noble]

Well,  Tom,  Shortleaf pine is considered the very best one that is native to the Ozarks-----well it's the only one   Locally what people call bull pines are ones that grow in the open or in pastures.  If left growing they will get big in diameter,  but have poor form.  They are short and limby and not considered desirable.  They are shortleaf pine,  cause that's all we have.

[ely]

thanks all, and i really like that last statement that tom made.

[Larry]

I have zero experience or knowledge of SYP.  So...I planted maybe 1/4 acre with shortleaf in NW Arkansas 6 years ago.  Trees are up maybe 15' tall and really doing good.  Plan on planting more pine this spring.  Got shortleaf and loblolly ordered.  From Tom and Noble I guess the shortleaf is the best for lumber production...don’t know if I can grow longleaf or slash.  Which is best for wildlife and landscaping?

[Jeff]

If you like the adams family, you'll like long leaf, just about the time it gets to its bottle brush or rocket stage. It looks like Cousin it 

http://www.forestryforum.com/board/index.php?topic=17189.msg248224#msg248224

[WDH]

The native yellow pine in that area is most likely shortleaf.  Loblolly, slash, and longleaf are much less common in that area because their needles are longer and the ice storms really tear them up (longer needles collect more ice and more ice means more breakage).  In fact, a few years ago, there was a severe ice storm in SE OK and SW AR over the Christmas holidays (I bet you remember it!) that really tore up the loblolly plantations that had been planted.  Decimated them in fact.  It is not nice to fool Mother Nature.  That is why slash pine does not grow in Indiana so don't plant it there!!!!  Over eons of time, shortleaf became more adaptable and therefore more common in that area.  So, there is a very high probably that you have shortleaf.  The needles will be 5" or less in length and the needles are in bundles of 2's and 3's, sometimes more 2's than 3's.  The bark is unique from the other southern yellow pines in that there are small round dimples on the bark called pitch pockets.   They actually look like little pock marks. 

[Phorester]

Yellow pine and Southern Yellow Pine (SYP) is a catchall term for all two and three needled pines that grow in the south.  It's more of a product term than a species term.  All these pines have similiar properties when you saw them into boards, so they are lumped together as a product.

But out in the woods they are different species. Then you get into naming them, and terms like bull pine, cabbage pine, old field pine, can be applied to different species or to the same species.  Landowners, management foresters, procurement foresters, sawmillers may all have different names for the same pine tree.  That's the reason for the scientific or latin names.

[RMay]

SE Okla. has lobloly & short leaf that  is native to the state. The short leaf has two needles three to five in. long & lobloly has three needles five to seven in. long 

[Pullinchips]

I agree with others if your receive ice or snow DO NOT PLANT slash longleaf and maybe even loblolly.  They will grow good and fast untill the first major ice event then they will suffer severly by breakage or lean so far over as to never upright as others have mentioned.  Another name for a open grown pine is a wolf tree.  Just another name for ya.  But, there are other less common yellow pines native to the south although less common and not a valuable timber species but able to produce lumber to some deree they are pond pine and virginia pine.  V. pine has short needles like shortleaf but they are twisted and very poor formed tree that retainds lower limbs. Pond pine is just a nasty tree altogeather that grows in wet areas in the coastal plain. Just some more info for curious minds.

-Nate

[DanG]

That's always been my understanding, too.  The ones we always talk about are the four MAJOR Southern Yellow Pines, but there are others.  One that is native to the coastal plain of the Fla. Panhandle is the Sand Pine.  It is very limby, but will grow in very poor soil.  It is being planted quite a bit on land that has been depleted by previous plantations.

[Brian Beauchamp]

Around the Atoka area, if it is not in a plantation, then it is most likely going to be Shortleaf Pine (Pinus echinata). If it is a plantation, it is most likely going to be Loblolly Pine (Pinus taeda), but there is a chance it could be Shortleaf as well. I have yet to see any Longleaf or Slash Pine planted anywhere in S.E. Oklahoma, but it does not mean it hasn't been done.

While driving through the area between Antlers and McAlester yesterday, I saw the damage from the most recent ice storm. It was horrible. Almost all of the hardwoods are even bent over to the ground...that is, those that are not broken. How bad were you hit down by Atoka?

[Phorester]

Loblolly pine does very well up here (NW Virginia), although the dendrology and tree ID books says it's out of it's natural range. It's been planted since the CCC planted some in the 1930s.  It's the major pine species we plant up here.

When I first came to work up here about 30 years ago, I cringed when we had a big ice storm one day.  There was a stand of about 12 acres of loblolly that was about 20 years old in one of my counties.  From my college classes and reading the literature, I just knew it would all be on the ground.  I went out to see it the next week.  Not a tree on the ground, not a broken top anywhere.  A few 1 - 3 inch diameter broken limbs on the ground, that's all. That's when I began my real education in forestry, when I realized that not all I learned from books was true.  You need that background education to be able to intrepret what the forest is telling you, but mother nature sometimes fools the writers.

We have ice storms about every winter, practically all the loblolly that's been planted up here shows no ill effect from it.   Young saplings can be bent over until their tops are touching the ground.  Unless their stumps have been uprooted, they straighten back up when the ice melts.  No breakage in the big trees as the books predict.  Not here anyway.

[WDH]

Phorester you are fortunate.  About 5 years ago a Christmas ice storm devastated my Company's loblolly plantations in the Broken Bow, OK and DeQueen, AR area.  When I say devastated, I mean devastated.  There was 50% loss on several hundred thousand acres.  Of course, that was a unusually bad storm; I am sure some of you Forestry Forum members in AR and Ok remember it.  Eastern OK is the westernmost limit for all southern pines, and from that storm, it is easy to see why.

[Brian Beauchamp]

Phorester you are fortunate.  About 5 years ago a Christmas ice storm devastated my Company's loblolly plantations in the Broken Bow, OK and DeQueen, AR area.  When I say devastated, I mean devastated.  There was 50% loss on several hundred thousand acres.  Of course, that was a unusually bad storm; I am sure some of you Forestry Forum members in AR and Ok remember it.  Eastern OK is the westernmost limit for all southern pines, and from that storm, it is easy to see why.

Weyerhaeuser, I assume?

[Texas Ranger]

Rita put 120 mile an hour winds through east Texas, 12 year old stands and older were bent over and looked like they would be permanent.  They are clean and health now, growing straight and proud.  Like Phorester said, the books just get ya to a place, the rest is observation and doing.

[WDH]

Weyerhaeuser, I assume?

Yep.

[Phorester]

"Of course, that was a unusually bad storm"

WDH, we've had those too, but the loblolly didn't suffer any worse than other trees in these really bad ice storms. Some were indeed broken or flattened in these bad storms, but no more so than other tree species.  Can this also be said in the storms you describe, or did the loblollies suffer worse in those bad storms than other species? 

[WDH]

The loblolly got the worst of it, especially the stands that had been 1st thinned within the last 3 years.  The region was out of power for a week or more, so this was not a normal storm.  That may be why the damage was unusually bad.

[Phorester]

Yep, recent thinning makes the ones left more suceptible to ice and snow loads until they grow out a little.  I'm talking about closed stands.  Fortunately with the small amount of pine thinning here we haven't had any stands by heavy ice in the first couple of years after they were thinned.