Since I am most fond of four-season, full, flexible and fast-growing specimens whether here on the grounds of the Arboretum or in the home landscape, Pinus strobus is at the top of my list especially when I am close to it. (I am remembering Gary Whittenbaugh's directive, "My favorite conifer is the one I am standing closest to!")

I do spend a lot of time with the White Pines. Mysterious shapes seem to appear as evidenced by the fourteen feet of height and the width surpassing thirty feet of the specimen in our Pinetum. It looks like an elephant one year and a dinosaur the next. Michael Dirr in Hardy Trees and Shrubs, describes these shapes as, "The hauntingly beautiful asymmetry of the ancient trees" which "makes believers out of doubters." I could never argue with a third grader who tells me this tree looks like the one in Dr. Seuss!

Related by genus to the oldest living plants on earth, the Bristlecone, the Eastern White Pine has excellent bloodlines and historically, a variety of uses. Arthur Lee Jacobsen in North American Landscape Trees explains. "The name strobus was taken by the botanist Linnaeus from the Roman naturalist Pliny, who applied it to a tree from Persia used for fumigating or incense." Further, the inner bark of white pine is a remedy for coughs and congestion due to colds and bronchitis, flu, croup, laryngitis, as a tea or as an ingredient in cough syrup. Some Native American tribes used the inner bark or the sap as a poultice or dressing for wounds and sores. Pitch was poulticed to "draw out" boils, draw embedded splinters, felons, abscesses, also used for rheumatism, broken bones, cuts, bruises, and inflammation. Twig tea used for kidney and lung ailments. Bark and/or leaf tea used for sore throats, poulticed for headaches. Combined with uva ursi (bearberry), marshmallow, and poplar bark, it is excellent for diabetes. A hot resin can be spread on a hot cloth and applied as you would a mustard plaster for treating pneumonia, sciatic pains, and general muscular soreness.

Farmers prefer this plant as a windbreak. It has very few disease and insect problems. It can be used in home landscape as a screen. It grows rapidly for a pine tree and is long-lived and vigorous. The White Pine takes six to eight years to produce a six-foot tree on good sites. It was once of great economic importance in the lumber industry.

We have 36 different cultivars here on the grounds, including 34 in the Heartland, which are garden conifer in size. Also we have six Founders' Trees, so-named as they were planted before the Arboertum. Frances Bickelhaupt in her book A Private Couple Creates a Public Garden, explains: "even before we moved to our home on the grounds which later became the Arboretum, a local nurseryman was commissioned to plant rows of White Pines on the north side of the two acres and along the east street side. All DIED save one, which soon declined! The trees were replanted the following year, and many still live. (It was discovered that the plantsman had not removed the synthetic twine around the burlap ball. This root mass and 'burial garment' are displayed in our Education Center as a reminder to remove such material from plantings."

So, here is a tree, which offers a windbreak (as well as a specimen, in groupings, screens and even hedges), wound care, wreath material, winsome shapes. Is it any wonder I offer it to you as Plant of the Month?