Soft Pine
Soft pine is soft, clean, light, uniform, easily worked, not strong, free from knots and resins, and obtainable in large and perfect pieces. The wood is whitish and the yearly rings are not pronounced. The supply is divided, as obtained from the white pine on the one hand, and from the sugar-pine and all other species on the other.
White pine (Pinus strobus) grows in the north, central, and eastern United States and was formerly the important tree of North America. It emphasized the forest industries of Maine and of Michigan, and methods connected with harvesting it have influenced logging practices in many fields. It was long the only softwood seriously considered by Northern lumbermen. Thirty per cent of the sawn timber and lumber used in this country in 1899 was drawn from this species.73 White pine is diminishing so rapidly as to be already practically unobtainable in many places.
The Sugar Pine (Pinus lambertiana) of the Western States is a tree growing at high elevations and is so large as to take rank with the redwoods and other of the world’s greatest trees. Some material is derived from the Western white pine (Pinus flexilis) and one or more minor species. Sugar pine resembles, but is not as desirable as, white pine. The sweetish exudations from this tree are sometimes used in medicine. [p132]
Footnote
73 Roth, U. S. Forestry Bul. No. 22, p. 73.
“White Pine Timber Supplies.” U. S. S. Doc. 55-1, Vol. IV.