Scots pine vs Red pine...how do I tell?

[OneWithWood]

In my book that would be prior to 1492.

[SwampDonkey]

Or 1497 for us Canucks when Cabot arrived and mapped the Canadian Maritime coast and dipped fish from the Bay of Fundy with a basket. 

[Ron Scott]

From the Dictionary of Forestry, Native Species:  An idigenous species that is normally found as part of a particular ecosystem. A species that was present in a defined area prior to European settlement.

[Mooseherder]

This picture isn't great.  I'll get more next week of this stand of Red Pine at camp.
I love walking and riding thru here.

[barbender]

Up here, the scots pine grows well, but like other areas they have pretty poor form. There is a stand at the local college campus that has the best form I have seen in these trees. In fact, many people mistake them for red pine, they are about 80' tall and pretty straight. The orange bark doesn't start till about 50' up and the bottom half of the trees looks pretty much the same as the red pine they are mixed with in that stand.

[Mooseherder]

 About half of these Red Pine have good form. They border the whole southeast side of our property along Route 1. Weren't Red Pine just planted to keep people busy 30 years ago?
There is a guy up in Maine who made himself a machine to peel and make the log uniform to use for Log Cabins. He is just getting started and his plan is to build one for himself then maybe be able to sell some logs. He did a great job on his logs. Wish I woulda had my camera that day.

[SwampDonkey]

Must have been more than keeping busy.  Someone must have been paid.

We've planted a lot of old marginal farmland over the years with red pine, 100's of acres. Looks nice if you can keep the moose out until it gets 4 meters or so in height. They like to rip the tops off. The trouble with red pine is traditionally it needs to be big to be worth much. We have a limited market for the pulp and no commercial mill saws it that I know of. They use it mainly for utility poles. It's most always left standing on harvest blocks. Some plantations 40 years old or more have been spaced, but the pulp was barely feasible to cut.


Are their no state silviculture programs for thinning and planting on private woodlots? Are their restrictions on clear cutting? I don't see many big cuts along the highways, but if you go beyond Mapleton, there are large cuts. They seem to be out of view from the main artery (Route 1-1A).

Up there in Fort Kent, you can look east and see Blue Bell mountain, where we spent a lot of the summer whacking the bushes. 

We will be finishing up next Friday on our last block in view of the windmills on Mars Hill.

[sharp edge]

I always had trouble with Scot and Jack pines. I think other members might have trouble too, from looking at the replies. So I googled the trees and figured them out. ___ They are the samething but different___
SE

[Brian Beauchamp]

I bet it is genetics as well, SteveB.  Those scots pine in Sweden were fine.

...do you mean 'poor' genetics, or genetics in the sense that they evolved for a particular site/climatic conditions? If it's the latter, I agree...you could probably take those Scot's pines back over there and plant them where they're supposed to be and get perfectly good trees out of them.

[SwampDonkey]

From what I gather some of our early Scot's Pine plantings were of poor phenotype. Even at the source location they were poor. Some old farmer or what not, with no attention to quality or phenotype, just went out and collected some seed. Later seed sources proved to me much better through provenance testing. But sawfly or weevil, forget which, really hammer it bad up here. It will naturalize an area pretty good though. I see it spreading in fields and ditches. I seen it planted in some pretty poor soil to and the trees sure show signs of stress.

[LT40HDD51]

...The trouble with red pine is traditionally it needs to be big to be worth much. We have a limited market for the pulp and no commercial mill saws it that I know of. They use it mainly for utility poles...

Around here the log home builders like it, but as you said, it needs to be big. Like 24-30" at the butt and nice and straight. We get to buy some oversize stuff once in a while from some log builders and cutters we know locally.