Common names:
Black pine, Hudson Bay pine, Jack pine, Scrub pine
Description
Tree to 20(-27) m tall, with trunk to 0.5(-1) m in diameter, but often short and spindly in dense stands on nutrient poor soils. Bark bright orange-brown scaly when young, becoming dark gray and broken up into wavy, vertically elongate blocks separated by shallow furrows. Crown narrowly conical, with numerous short, horizontal or gently upswept branches. Thinly clothed with foliage, often retaining dead branches many years in crowded stands. Twigs yellowish brown initially but soon becoming grayish brown, hairless, roughened with scale leaves, often flushing twice in a single season. Buds 5-15 mm long, resinous. Needles in bundles of two, each needle 2-4(-5) cm long, stiff, sometimes slightly twisted, lasting 2-3 years, yellowish green. Individual needles with lines of stomates on both faces, a two-stranded midvein, and usually just two resin canals embedded in the green leaf tissue near the outer corners. Sheath 3-6 mm long, only the short outer scales remaining after the first season and persisting and falling with the bundle. Pollen cones 10-15 mm long, yellowish brown. Seed cones 3-7 cm long, egg-shaped, slightly asymmetrical, and often curved forward toward the twig, with 50-80 seed scales, green before maturity, ripening orange-brown but then often remaining unopened for years, and turning gray, then only opening widely to release the seeds after a fire, almost stalkless. Seed scales wedge-shaped, woody and stiff, the exposed portion mostly low, but sometimes domed on lower scales of the outer side of the seed cone, with a small, central, diamond-shaped umbo sometimes bearing a tiny prickle. Seed body 3-5 mm long, the easily detachable wing 10-12 mm long.
Northern North America, from the McKenzie River near Great Bear Lake and central Alberta east to Nova Scotia and south to southern Wisconsin and Michigan. Usually forming dense, even-aged pure stands but also mixed with other trees on sandy, infertile sites in the boreal forest; 0-600(-800) m
