Major eastern shade-intolerant/intermediate coniferous species

Pinus resinosa Ait. - red pine

Image 1. Young tree showing typical even development in the crown, October: the metal sleeve around the stem is a protection against squirrels in this seed-production area.

Image 2. Two red pine trees (next to the last tree on the right) in a stand of jack pine, September.

Image 3. Strips of red pine trees in a uniform strip clear-cutting operation, September: the trees shown are of two distinct ages, the older ones having survived the fire that permitted the regeneration of the younger ones; the differences can be seen in the relative branch spread and the relatively lower branches on the older trees that grew for many years in more open conditions, see also No. 4.

Image 4. Trees of two ages in the same stand (the same stand as that in No. 3): the tree in the centre is 105 years old, it has a wider-spreading and deeper crown with large, dead branches nearer the base, and a fire scar visible in the basal 1 metre of the main stem; the other trees that grew up in a denser stand, and hence with narrower, smaller-branched crowns are 80 years old.

Image 5. Lower trunks of 90-year-old trees.

Image 6. Bark of a 105-year-old tree, 57 cm in diameter at breast height.

Image 7. A terminal long-shoot bud with a whorl of seven lateral long-shoot buds around its base, and below them, the short shoots on the supporting one-season-old long shoot, August: note (1) that two of the lateral long-shoot buds are smaller than the others (such differences, as are the differences in sizes of the long shoots produced, are typical), and (2) that a long sheath of bud scales is retained around the base of the two long leaves of each short shoot.

Image 8. Elongating terminal and lateral long shoots, all of which grow in an erect orientation at first: note the relatively large brown, scales borne all along each long shoot, and being spread apart first at the base and subsequently acropetally (towards the tip) as elongation progresses (the buds of pines do not "burst" in the sense that those of other genera do, they simply extend as their component parts, including all the scales, are spread apart).

Image 9. A terminal long shoot on a lateral branch extending, in early June, and displaying its compenent parts; in this case, proximally, pollen cones from their individual pollen-cone buds, each in the axil of a scale, and, distally, short-shoot buds, each also in the axil of a scale.

Image 10. Pollen cones at the pollen-shedding stage and short shoots with their leaves beginning to elongate, mid-June: the purple microsporangia of the pollen cones are clearly evident, as are pollen grains on some of the leaves below.

Image 12. Three seed cones, closed after the receptive stage, borne around the base of the newly developing terminal long-shoot bud in a whorl with newly developing lateral long-shoot buds at the tip of a newly elongating long shoot bearing new short shoots laterally, early July.

Image 13. Three seed cones at the end of their first season of development, September: the terminal long-shoot bud around the base of which they are situated, and the lateral long-shoot buds in the same whorl are completing their pre-dormancy development.

Image 14. A seed cone nearing the end of its second season of development, early September.

Image 15. An "open", mature seed cone - seed cones open in the late fall or in the spring after cone maturation and drying.

Information provided by:
Dr. G.R. Powell
Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management at UNB