Secret Stories of the White Pine
Identification tips + a recipe for medicinal pine syrup
White pine (Pinus strobus) has a long history of cultural and medicinal use, but often doesn’t get the credit it deserves. I’ve actually heard people refer to it as a ‘trash tree’. How could any tree ever be ‘trash’, much less the noble white pine?
As a native north American tree, it has deep and important ties to our collective cultural history here in the US.
Indigenous cultures held it in the highest regard and there are many historians who refer to white pine as “the tree that built America”.
A Symbol of the Revolution
We all know that the Boston Tea Party as the event that sparked the Revolutionary War, but not many people realize that it was actually disputes over the ‘royal pines’ that led up to that fateful event. Tempers were flaring for several years prior over the fact that the King’s Navy was insolently claiming the biggest and the best white pines as their own. It was such a sensitive issue that in 1772 the “White Pine Riot” broke out.
As a result, the white pine tree became a symbol of American independence from the King, and images of white pines were emblazoned on Revolutionary War Flags.