History buffs, step forward. I have a question for you. Which Northeastern evergreen tree helped bring about the Revolutionary War?
Found throughout our area, this tree drops long, sticky cones from wand-like branches. It grows tall in the forest, flat and bushy in open fields. Its needles come in clusters of five, which is the number of letters in the tree’s first name.
Our mystery tree is the eastern white pine. Its role as a shaper of America’s political destiny developed as a result of its value in the manufacture of ship’s masts.
In the early 1600s, the British navy was a worldwide sea power. One vessel in its huge fleet, under the command of Capt. George Weymouth, crossed the Atlantic and came ashore on the coast of Maine. Penetrating the densely forested interior of a tidal river, Weymouth got his first look at white pines. He collected sample mast-wood logs and returned to England with them.
The arrival on English soil of such exquisite mast wood — strong, light and close-grained — created tremendous excitement in the navy. Not only did white pine possess the proper attributes for making fine masts, it also could be obtained in single pieces, or “sticks,” of incredible length. The colonies were producing pines in excess of 125 feet tall. This left British shipbuilders tingling with anticipation.
The English set about exploiting their vast colonial resource at once. Contracts were negotiated with New England agents, and the great white pine harvest began. The largest and tallest pines were cut down, dragged to the nearest river, lashed onto great rafts and floated to seaports for export all along the Northeast coast.
Difficulties with this arrangement arose as a result of historical changes on both sides of the Atlantic. In England, the crown’s greed for increasingly large shipments of mast timbers reached excessive proportions.
In the Colonies, more and more pioneers were advancing into the wilderness to establish homesteads. Traveling far beyond designated land grant areas, the Colonists began clearing forests that were vital to the British government.
In clearing land for farming, homesteaders routinely chopped down or burned huge white pines. This practice infuriated the British. They quickly passed laws giving Colonial governors the authority to mark every great white pine with a large blaze known as the King’s Broad Arrow. Any tree receiving such a mark was royal property and not to be touched.
This tactic rubbed salt on an open wound. To the Colonists, the King’s Broad Arrow was the same as the Stamp Tax — a greedy intrusion on their freedoms as pioneers.
When revolution became inevitable, the Colonies were quick to stop the export of all mast wood to Great Britain. They feared their own white pines would return to haunt them on British ships.
In April, 1775, opposing forces met at Lexington and Concord.
The war was on. In the early days of the Revolution, when Colonists raised their first flag, an image flapped upon it symbolizing their scorn for the British: a tall and un-blazoned white pine.
Naturalist Rick Marsi, a member of the Susquehanna Group, is a journalist, public speaker and leader of eco-tours. His book of favorite nature columns is Wheel of Seasons, available at www.rickmarsi.com. ©2014 Rick Marsi