Eastern white pine

Portrait

Eastern white pine is the tallest conifer east of the Rockies. Before colonization some stood over sixty metres, and their straight trunks became masts for the British navy. Few of those giants remain, but you still meet them in the Laurentians, recognizable by their layered silhouette and branches that seem to reach eastward, carved by the prevailing wind.

The needles are fine and supple, in bundles of five, a bluish green that whispers like silk when the wind moves through. The cones are long and slightly curved, often streaked with white resin. The Haudenosaunee made it their Tree of Peace, and it is the provincial tree of Ontario.

Harvest

Its resin is softer and paler than other pines', almost milky when fresh. Étienne collects it from pruning scars and broken limbs in early autumn. In spring he also gathers a few tender young shoots, sparingly, never enough to weaken a tree.

In the workshop

Steeped in avocado oil, the resin gives a soft, rounded scent, less turpentine than Scots pine and almost vanilla-like. The dried spring shoots flavour some of the shop's herbal teas with a tart taste of spring forest. An ingredient of patience and respect, from a tree that carried an entire country on its back.