Every winter storm in southeastern Massachusetts produces the same phone calls, and they are overwhelmingly about one tree: eastern white pine. Not oak, which is bigger. Not maple, which is more common in yards. White pine. Here is why.
Three things stacked against it
It keeps its needles. Oaks and maples go into a nor'easter as bare frames. Wet snow and freezing rain pass straight through them. A white pine goes into the same storm with every needle still attached and a canopy shaped like a sail. Load ten inches of wet snow onto that and the tree is carrying enormous extra weight exactly where it can least afford it — out at the ends of long horizontal limbs.
The wood is weak. White pine is soft, light and brittle. That is why it is such good lumber and such a poor structural tree. When the load gets high enough, big limbs snap off clean rather than bending.
The roots are shallow. White pine roots run wide and flat rather than deep, especially in the compacted or sandy soils common around here. Saturate that soil with three inches of rain, then push on a full sail of a canopy with 50 mile-an-hour gusts, and the whole root plate can lift. That is the failure that takes out a corner of a roof, because the tree does not break — it tips, with everything still attached.
What that looks like in a yard
The classic southeastern Massachusetts scenario is a row of white pines planted as a screen along a property line thirty or forty years ago. They were spaced for the size they were then. Now they are 70 feet tall, crowded, with no lower limbs left because they shaded each other out, and all the weight is at the top. Take one out of the middle of that row — or lose one in a storm — and the ones on either side are suddenly exposed to wind they have never had to stand up to.
How to tell if yours is a problem
Walk out and look for these:
- A lean that got worse. Compare it to a photo from a few years ago. A pine that has always leaned is often fine; one that has started leaning is not.
- Soil heaving at the base. A crack or a raised lip of soil on the side opposite the lean means the root plate is already moving. That is an urgent call.
- Big deadwood in the canopy. Grey, needle-free limbs eight feet long and four inches thick, forty feet up over where you park.
- A tuft-topped shape. Long bare trunk, all the foliage in a clump at the top. That is the highest-leverage shape a tree can have.
- Proximity. Take the height of the tree and pace it out on the ground. If the house is inside that circle, it matters more.
What can be done short of removal
Not every worrying pine has to come out. Taking weight off the ends of the longest limbs reduces the leverage a lot without changing how the tree looks from the street. Removing deadwood takes away the things most likely to come down on their own. If the tree is one of a crowded row, thinning the row can help all of them.
What does not help is topping it. Cutting the leaders off produces a burst of weak regrowth on a wound that will not close, and in five years you have a tree that is more likely to fail, not less.
The time to deal with it
Before the storm, not during. After a real nor'easter every tree company in the region has the same queue, and the trees already on top of something go first. A pine you are worried about in October is a scheduled job. The same pine in February is an emergency, and it usually takes a gutter with it.
If you have one you are not sure about, we will come look at it. Free, same day when you call or text early.