PNW Native
Ranges along Pacific coast, from southern Alaska to northern California ( c )
Trees are short, growing only up to 20 m / 70 ft in height. Trunks are often bent, irregular, or some form of crooked, with thick dark brown-black bark that breaks off into scales. Green needles are 2 – 7 cm / 1 – 3 in. long, in paired bundles and often with twists and curves. Dark brown stiff woody cones are also frequently curved with a slight hooked bend, egg-shaped, with prickles, and 3 – 5 cm long. (PM)
Shore pine thrives in areas with salty, strong, coastal winds on both dry highlands and wet lowlands. Rodents and porcupines consume the soft inner cambium of shore pine. It is more important as edge habitat and cover for smaller animals and is less depended on by big game. Alaskan brown bears traveling along the coast to feeding areas rely on shore pine for cover. Alaskan yellowlegs use shore pine as nesting habitat. ( c )
Shore pine is part of the same species of tree as Lodgepole pine; the two are different ecotypes of the same species. Shore pine thrives in low-nutrient, poor, rocky soils, bogs, sand dunes, rocky coastal hilltops, and exposed shoreline. Most other trees cannot tolerate these harsh conditions. In especially harsh environments like subalpine and muskeg, shore pine takes a dwarf bonsai form. (PM)
The inner cambium of shore pine was boiled and eaten as food by coastal indigenous Americans including the Quinault. They also chewed the buds to ease sore throat pain and used the pine pitch to treat open sores. Lodgepole pine, a different growth habit of the same species of pine, Pinus contorta, was much more widely used as food, material, and medicine amongst Northwest Coast Peoples. (EG) Shore pine pitch and bark were medicinally used along the Northwest Coast by the Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Haida, Nuxalk, Kwakwaka’wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth, and Coast Salish. The pine gum was either made into a tuberculosis treating tea, applied to the chest in poultice form for heart pain and rheumatism, or applied directly to cuts. The pine pitch was used by the Lower Stl’atl’imx to coat Indian-hemp fishing line, by the Saanich to attach arrowheads to shafts, and by the Sechelt to waterproof baskets and canoes. The Haida would peel sheets of the bark to use as broken limb splints, and the Nisga’a would split the root of shore pine and twine them together into rope. (PM)
The light, brittle, coarse-grained, wood of shore pine is not commercially valued for its timber but is occasionally used as firewood. ( c )
[1] Cope, Amy B. 1993. Pinus contorta var. contorta. In: Fire Effects Information System,. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory (Producer). Available: https://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/tree/pinconc/all.html.
