An old, mature loblolly at the Bluff Campground, Congaree National Park [C.J. Earle, 2024.03.05].
Mature tree at Waccamaw State Park, NC [C.J. Earle, 2003.11.26].
A mixed stand of P. taeda and P. palustris in the Francis Marion National Forest, South Carolina [C.J. Earle, 2024.03.05].
Mature trees along Village Creek, Lumberton, Texas [C.J. Earle, 2024.02.08].
A seedling ca. 10 cm tall in the Francis Marion National Forest, South Carolina [C.J. Earle, 2024.03.05].
Foliar unit fallen from a tree at Fort Frederica National Monument, Florida [C.J. Earle, 2024.03.03].
Foliar units bearing nearly-ripe pollen cones, and lots of Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) on a tree at Fort Frederica National Monument, Florida [C.J. Earle, 2024.03.03].
Cluster of nearly-mature pollen cones on a tree at Fort Frederica National Monument, Florida [C.J. Earle, 2024.03.05].
A pair of older cones from the crown of a tree felled by a severe storm; Holton Creek, Florida [C.J. Earle, 2024.02.15].
Bark of a tree in Congaree Swamp. Rule is 15 cm long [C.J. Earle, 1999.03].
Bark on tree in habitat, east Texas, about 80 cm dbh, growing in floodplain with mixed hardwoods and Taxodium [C.J. Earle, 2024.02.08].
Bark on a tree about 85 cm dbh at Fort Frederica National Monument, Florida; I believe this is natural regeneration although now maintained as an ornamental tree [C.J. Earle, 2024.03.03].
Typical loblolly pine habitat in the Congaree swamp; hardwoods are mostly Nyssa aquatica, very similar to Pinus elliottii habitat, except the understory palm is Sabal minor [C.J. Earle, 2024.03.05].
An exceptionally large tree, about 130 cm dbh, on the floodplain in Congaree National Park [C.J. Earle, 2024.03.05].
Another view of the above tree, 42 m tall [C.J. Earle, 2024.03.05].
The largest known loblolly in Florida, 127.8 cm dbh and very healthy, in Ocala Wildlife Area [C.J. Earle, 2024.02.16].
A typical tree in the Congaree Swamp forest: 116 cm dbh [C.J. Earle, 1999.03].
Aerial view of a typical P. taeda forest: 100% industrial plantation forestry, near Hamburg, Arkansas. Yellow scale bar is 500 m long [Google Earth 2025].
On-the-ground view near the center of the above image [C.J. Earle, 2024.03.11].
Pinus taeda
Loblolly pine, North Carolina pine, oldfield pine, bull pine, rosemary pine; 火炬松 [Chinese]; pin taeda [French]; テ-ダマツ [Japanese]; Сосна ладанная [Russian]. Commonly called "taeda" when used in plantation forestry outside its native range. The hybrid with P. palustris is commonly called bastard pine.
Type: USA, "Habitat in Virginiae, Canadae paludosis", J. Clayton 496 (lectotype BM). There are 5 heterotypic synonyms, none still in use; see POWO for details. This species belongs to subgenus Pinus, subsection Australes Loudon, clade Taeda (Cruz-Nicolás et al. 2024). This clade is comprised of species found in the SE US, and includes several pines that co-occur with this species in mixed stands (Pinus echinata, P. elliottii, P. glabra, P. palustris, and P. serotina).
Pinus taeda forms a variety of natural hybrids. Natural hybrids are known with 5 other species of subsection Australes:
Finally, Businský (2013) found a natural hybrid with P. patula in a Russian arboretum; he named it Pinus × critchfieldii, but that name is invalid and no valid name has yet been assigned (POWO 2025).
Monoecious evergreen trees to 46 m tall and 80(-160) cm dbh, usually with a single straight, nearly clear bole and a domed to irregular crown of spreading, ascending branches. Bark first thin, slightly scaly, orange red, with age darker and forming square or irregularly rectangular, scaly plates; no resin pockets. Twigs 5-10 mm thick, rough with pulvini from fallen fascicles, orange to yellow-brown, darker with age. Buds cylindrical, acute, pale red-brown, 10-15(-20) mm long, <10 mm thick, slightly resinous; cataphylls red-brown with white-fringed margins, apex acuminate or reflexed. Leaves (2-)3 per fascicle, persisting 3 years, (10-)12-18(-23) cm × 1-2 mm, straight, slightly twisted, pliant, deep yellow-green, all surfaces with narrow stomatal lines, margins finely serrulate, apex acute to abruptly conic-subulate; sheath 15-25 mm, base persistent. Pollen cones cylindric, 20-40 × 7-10 mm, yellow to yellow-brown. Seed cones maturing in 2 years, shedding seeds soon thereafter, not persistent, solitary or in small clusters, nearly terminal, symmetric, lanceoloid before opening, narrow-ovoid when open, (5-)6-12(-15) cm long, mostly dull yellow-brown, nearly sessile, scales without dark border on adaxial surface distally; apophyses dull, slightly thickened, variously raised (more so toward cone base), rhombic, strongly transversely keeled; umbo central, recurved, stoutly pyramidal, tapering to stout-based, sharp prickle. Seeds obdeltoid; body 5-6 mm, red-brown; wing to 20 mm. 2n=24" (Kral 1993, Farjon 2010). See García Esteban et al. (2004) for a detailed characterization of the wood anatomy.
If you see a big pine tree in the SE US, it's probably a loblolly pine. In any other native pine a tree 35 m tall and 80 cm dbh is extraordinary, but for loblolly it's commonplace. The seed cones are diagnostic. Lacking mature cones, the following features distinguish other southern pines from Pinus taeda. P. rigida is distinguished by resin pockets in the bark, pitch-covered buds, and needles <13 cm long. P. serotina is distinguished by needles growing from the trunk (also seen in P. rigida, but no other SE US pines). P. elliottii needles are almost all >20 cm long and more numerous within a foliar unit. P. palustris also has longer needles, as well as thick, white buds, and the understory will contain some of its grass-stage seedlings.
The hybrids with P. palustris generally show intermediate characters, but lack the "grass stage" and early slow growth of P. palustris; conversely, the cones are more like P. palustris than P. taeda. Chapman (1922) provides further details of identification.
Loblolly pine does not reproduce vegetatively, so its life history begins with seed germination. This typically occurs best on exposed mineral seedbeds (relatively common after fires or windstorms) with adequate soil moisture. Moisture stress is the most common cause of seedling mortality, and seedling growth rate is strongly responsive to soil moisture. Regeneration can occur under a forest canopy but seedlings have a high mortality risk under a hardwood canopy. Conversely, if seedlings are still taller than competing hardwoods at year 3, they are likely to remain in the canopy and become forest dominants. On good sites, production of cone crops begins at about 25 years and the trees are nearing maximum production of seed at about 40 years. Reproduction begins in June or July with development of a reproductive bud. In the late summer and fall (October) this develops into a pollen cone bud or seed cone bud, which remains dormant over the winter. Pollen is shed and seed cones are receptive between early February and mid-April, depending upon latitude and the accumulation of degree-days in any given spring. Each tree tends to shed pollen before the seed cones become receptive, which reduces the likelihood of self-pollination. The seed cones mature throughout the ensuing growing season, enter dormancy, and achieve maturity the following summer. Seedfall begins in October and continues into December, and is heaviest during dry, warm, windy weather. The seeds then become dormant, and germination usually begins in March, depending upon soil temperatures. A negligible fraction of seeds survive another year, so there is no seed bank. Seed crops are produced every year but are highly variable in response to conditions such as weather, disturbance, and competition; large crops are only produced at intervals of 3-6 years. Seed size and the percentage of viable seed are also highly variable (Baker and Langdon 1990, and sources therein). As noted above, lifespans seldom exceed 200 years and most mature trees eventually fall to another stand-destroying disturbance, or to hardwood competition, or to pests or pathogens.
USA: New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas; also widely planted (see Ethnobotany). Pinus × sondereggeri is widespread in Louisiana and east Texas. The species occurs at at 0-700(-780) m elevation in areas with a humid, warm-temperate climate featuring long, hot summers and mild winters. The average annual precipitation is 1020 to 1520 mm with a frost-free period of from 5 to 10 months. The mean July temperature is 27°C and frequently exceeds 38°C; the mean January temperature averages 4-16°C and occasionally drops as lows as -23°C near the northern and western range limits (Little 1971). Schultz (1997) noted that its range is almost perfectly defined by annual actual evapotranspiration of between 813 mm and 1050 mm, but that is likely changing in response to anthropogenic climate change, which indicates declining habitat suitability on the Gulf coast and likely range extensions in the continental interior, into Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia (USDA 2025). The species is generally limited in northern extent by winter cold and in westward extent by growing-season precipitation (Fowells 1965). Natively, loblolly pine primarily grows on Ultisols, which are clay-rich, acidic, strongly leached soils commonly found in humid warm-temperate and tropical areas; however it tolerates a wide range of soil conditions, which has facilitated widespread planting of the species within its native range and elsewhere. However, it is relatively intolerant of alkaline soils (Fowells 1965, Baker and Langdon 1990).
Distribution data from USGS (1999).
Loblolly is a very widely-distributed pine of the SE United States, and consequently occurs within a wide variety of plant associations with forest dominant trees that include P. echinata, P. elliottii, P. palustris, and most southern hardwoods, notably many species of Quercus, Acer rubrum, Liriodendron tulipifera, Fagus grandifolia, Fraxinus spp., Magnolia grandiflora, Nyssa aquatica, Carya aquatica, and Ulmus americana (Farjon 2010). It is a prominent species in Society of American Foresters cover types 46 (Eastern redcedar), 70 (Longleaf pine), 74 (Cabbage palmetto), 75 (Shortleaf pine), 79 (Virginia pine), 80 (Loblolly pine - shortleaf pine), 81 (Loblolly pine), 82 (Loblolly pine - hardwood), 83 (Longleaf pine - slash pine), 85 (Slash pine - hardwood), 87 (Sweetgum - yellow-poplar), 91 (Swamp chestnut oak - cherrybark oak), 98 (Pond pine), and 104 (Sweetbay - swamp tupelo - redbay) (Carey 1992). Of these, the most predominant is SAF 80, the loblolly-shortleaf forest, which extends from Delaware to Arkansas and Texas. In this type P. echinata and P. taeda are the dominants, although the proportion of each varies from stand to stand, with P. echinata predominant on the drier sites and at higher elevations. Cumulatively, the species is found in a wide array of forests within its range, including coastal swamps, river floodplains, old river terraces, recolonized agricultural lands, and relatively mesic sites within upland forests. There is some provenance variation; besides the northern populations being more cold-tolerant, there is also greater drought tolerance and greater resistance to fusiform rust (discussed below) in western areas, and in these areas loblolly more commonly forms mixed stands with other southern pines.
Pinus taeda is basically an early-successional species, typically regenerating from seed following stand-destroying disturbance by various agencies including wildfire, windstorms, logging, and probably pathogens and floods. The seedlings are relatively intolerant of fire compared with P. echinata, P. elliottii, and P. palustris (Bradley et al. 2016, Pile et al. 2017), so it lacks the close association with frequent low-intensity fire seen in those species. It grows rapidly when young and at that time is shade-tolerant compared to most other pines; given ample sunlight it readily overtops its competitors, but also becomes shade-intolerant once it is a canopy tree. It rarely lives longer than 200 years and eventually succumbs to competition from more shade-tolerant competitors, many of which can eventually match its height. The timeline of this process varies widely. Succession to angiosperm forest is faster on better sites because the hardwood understory develops more rapidly on such sites, and because hardwoods are generally capable of faster growth than conifers when not limited by factors such as light, nutrients and water. In old fields (formerly a widespread habitat), where grasses and herbs predominate, succession to hardwoods is slower than in wooded areas, where hardwood sprouts grow rapidly from established root systems. Thus on some sites the transition to hardwood dominance may take much less than 200 years, while on many others, loblolly only slowly surrenders dominance to other conifers and a stand-destroying disturbance is very likely to intervene before the trees become senescent (Carey 1992, Schultz 1997, and sources therein).
There are few pests and pathogens of particular concern for loblolly pine. As with most conifers a wide variety of insects are associated with it, but most are insignificant in terms of damage or mortality. The most serious insect pests are bark beetles, particularly the southern pine beetle (Dendroctonus frontalis) and pine engraver beetles (Ips spp.), which attack the cambium and may girdle the tree. Also, the cone and seed feeders Dioryctria spp. and Leptoglossus spp. can seriously reduce seed crops. Most destructive pine beetle infestations originate in stands that are under stress because of poor site conditions or adverse weather (usually drought). Once a pine beetle irruption develops, adjacent stands can also be attacked (Baker and Langdon 1990). The most unusual pest of loblolly pine is probably the feral pig (Sus scrofa). These pests were introduced from Europe and their rooting activity has been cited as a factor of decline in several southern pine species, but primarily Pinus taeda. The pigs predispose trees to decline by causing wounds and injury, facilitating insect entry and fungal pathogens, and perhaps by acting as vectors for fungal pathogens (Eckhardt et al. 2016). The pathogens of concern are all fungi, and mainly concern managed stands where large portions of a seedling or sapling crop can be killed by black root rot (e.g. Fusarium spp., Macrophomina spp.) and fusiform rust (Cronartium quercuum f. sp. fusiforme). Older trees are at risk from root, heart and butt rots (Heterobasidion annosum, Phellinus pini and Phaeolus schweinitzii), but these are long-established pathogens that mainly afflict older trees in later-successional forests (Baker and Langdon 1990).
Besides insects, a variety of vertebrate wildlife benefit from loblolly pine. These considerations mainly apply to naturally regenerated forests; extensive unbroken tracts of pure loblolly, or any other single species, will not provide good habitats. High habitat value requires structural diversity and a landscape mosaic of stands in all stages of development because few animals can meet all of their needs in a single forest type. Loblolly pines and other plants in loblolly-dominated forest types are important to many wildlife species (Schultz 1997). Forested stands provide cover and habitat for white-tailed deer, northern bobwhite, wild turkey, and grey and fox squirrels, and old-growth stands provide foraging and nesting habitat for the threatened red-cockaded woodpecker (Baker and Langdon 1990; see Conner et al. 1997 and Schultz 1997 for a detailed review of red-cockaded woodpecker use of loblolly pine). In a more encompassing analysis, Schultz (1997) sites loblolly-dominated forests as important for 14 species of amphibians, 15 of reptiles, 51 of birds, and 26 of mammals. As for mammals, he notes that "the vast majority of mammal species are non-game, and there is very little information about the effects of loblolly pine management on their populations." However, loblolly stands are important for many game mammals, including eastern cottontail rabbit, coyote, gray and red fox, black bear, fox squirrel, gray squirrel, and white-tailed deer. Besides providing wildlife habitat, loblolly pine also benefits wildlife more directly. The seeds are an important food source for over 20 species of songbirds, especially the red crossbill, and small mammals also consume them. Deer and rabbits browse the seedlings (Wahlenberg 1960). In general though, the best and most productive wildlife habitat is found where loblolly pine mixes with hardwood species, in areas with high understory species and structural diversity (Schultz 1997).
The current official "big tree", last measured in 2020, is 149 cm dbh and 40.8 m tall, with a 27.4 m crown spread; it grows in Northampton County, VA (Payne 2025). The largest I have record of is 152 cm dbh, 45 m tall, crown spread 25 m, located in Warren, Arkansas (American Forests 1996). Southeast of Warren, Ashley County also has some large trees, and General Land Office survey records (which are the closest thing we have to presettlement data) record trees up to 182 cm dbh (18.8 feet girth) (Bragg 2006). The largest tree in South Carolina, in Congaree Swamp National Park, has a dbh of 152 cm, height 44 m, stem volume 42 m3 (Robert Van Pelt e-mail 2004.02.17). Other trees in the Congaree have been measured to heights as great as 52.7 m (173 feet), with the tallest (probably still) living tree measured at 51.4 m (168.7 feet) (Blozan 2005). These are lasered heights calculated during a comprehensive survey; taller trees have been reported from the Congaree in the past, but they were measured using survey methods notoriously prone to overestimation (Will Blozan e-mail 2007.08.27). Trees up to 46 m tall have been reported for the Lost Forty forest (32.38746°N, 92.38511°W) in south-central Arkansas (Heitzman et al. 2004).
Moving outside the species' native range, a tree 60.0 m tall was climbed and measured on 2011.02.18, at the Buffelsnek plantation, Knysna, South Africa (Leon Visser email 2014.11.05). The largest reported loblolly in Australia is near Beechworth, Victoria; it was last measured as 116 cm dbh and 32 m tall, with a 16 m crown spread (National Register of Big Trees 2025).
There are few age data, but there is an age of 246 years, crossdated, for a big tree in the Congaree National Park, South Carolina, last verified in 2011. It was originally found and sampled in 1992 by N. Pederson and T. Doyle (Pederson 2025). Also, there is a crossdated age of 191 years for specimen UC04-2 collected at Union Camp Big Woods, North Carolina by A.C. Barefoot and W.L. Hafley in 1985 (NCDC 2006). Cely (2019) provides circumstantial evidence for a tree 250 years old, also in the Congaree. Greater ages have been claimed, but without any supporting evidence.
Aboriginal use of Pinus taeda is recorded for the Cherokee people and mentions only the use of its wood for carving, construction, and building canoes. This seems a very incomplete listing. Dozens of different tribes lived within the vast range of loblolly pine, and their people likely exploited the resource widely, putting it to the same general uses as other southern pines. These include (Native American Ethnobotany Database 2025):
When settlers arrived, loblolly pine quickly found use as a timber tree; its large size and decay-resistant heartwood made it well suited for shipbuilding and other uses needing particularly large timbers. During the colonial period, some laws required that ships' masts be made of loblolly pine. Harvest quickly degraded coastal forests, but interior stands remained relatively intact due to the difficulties of moving such large timbers over long distances. During this period, loblolly pine was a relatively minor component of forests within its range; the forests were overwhelmingly dominated by Pinus palustris within that species' range, and by other fire-adapted pines such as P. rigida at the northeast limits and P. echinata at the northwest limits of loblolly pine's distribution. Loblolly's intolerance for fire largely restricted it to an early-successional role on mesic, relatively fireproof sites. However, as the settlers cleared the land for agriculture, large areas of such mesic lands were reverted to an early successional condition, setting the stage for vast changes following the Civil War (Schultz 1997). In the years 1865-1915 a variety of cultural changes virtually swapped the status of loblolly and longleaf pine:
By 1927, 95% of the original southern pine landscape had been logged. Left behind was a wasteland, with almost no trees large enough to produce wood, and no areas replanted. Even so, modern techniques of silviculture had started to take root. By 1905 parties such as the U.S. Forest Service and Yale School of Forestry were advocating for science-based forestry to recover and replace the destroyed southern pine forests. Paradoxically, the process was speeded up by the Great Depression, thanks to creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933. This created armies of young men entering the forests at government expense to plant trees, fence cutover lands from feral pigs, and control wildfire. Ten new national forests were created on cutover land, and others were expanded. Replanting of these lands focused on loblolly pine, which usually exceeds other southern pines in terms of growth rates (on some sites P. elliottii does better) and can be grown on very short rotations. It is also very easy to regenerate and has no dependence on prescribed fire, which can be a costly and risky management tool. In current silviculture, many of the trees represent private genotypes designed to maximize production, as is common in most agricultural crops in the U.S. Loblolly pine is now the most economically important conifer in the U.S. Schultz (1997) inventoried a U.S. growing stock covering 134 thousand km2 with a volume of 1.4 billion cubic meters as of 1989, up from 0.8 billion in 1960. At that time loblolly made up more than half of the total southern pine growing stock. The importance of southern pines in general, and loblolly in particular, continues to increase; the southern U.S. now produces more timber than any other country in the world, and it is almost all in pines, especially loblolly (Wear and Greis 2002). Compared to other southern pines, loblolly is overall more suitable for plantation forestry, and thus brings greater profits (Pickens n.d.). In 2024 I drove through the range of longleaf pine from northeast Florida to the northwest corner of Mississippi, in almost continuous loblolly pine plantations (photo at right). Those plantations are increasingly confined to private industrial timberland, though. Since the 1980s landowners have come to realize that longleaf pine has certain advantages over loblolly, including greater value for ecosystem services, biodiversity, game production, less vulnerability to windstorms and pine beetle attacks, good performance on long rotations, and less need for intensive active silviculture (Pickens n.d.). Consequently longleaf has today become the preferred species on many public forestlands and for many non-industrial private landowners who desire more from their forests than just financial return. This trend is echoed in the literature; from 1930 to 2000 loblolly was loved by science and government, and a vast literature documents that. Since 2000, very little has been written about loblolly, and the spotlight has been focused on longleaf. Loblolly remains one of the premier southern forest types, however, and may become still more important given the uncertainties about how these forests will change during the 21st century.
Chapman (1922) claims superior growth performance for the hybrid with P. palustris, but a more recent and quantitative study indicates that height, diameter and volume were not significantly different from P. taeda for a 20-year-old plantation in South Carolina (Henderson and Schoenike 1981).
Loblolly pine is also an extremely important timber species outside its native range. Plantations were established in South Africa by 1908, and it was first planted on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean in 1911 and in Australia in 1917 (Lindsay 1932). It was first introduced into South America in 1948 (Golfari 1970). It remains an important timber species in all these countries, but today the most extensive plantings are in China and Brazil, which together produce and plant more than 320 million seedlings annually (often these plantations also feature P. elliottii). The most successful exotic plantings are usually between latitudes 24°-30° N or S, at elevations of 200-900 m. Growth rates can be spectacular, with rotations commonly completed in 15 to 25 years. As a result, there is essentially no heartwood and the species is generally not used for timber (although there is considerable research directed at changing that), but is widely exploited for pulp and engineered wood products (Schultz 1997).
Loblolly pine has also seen some scientific use. Dendrochronology studies include climate-growth response (e.g. Samuelson et al. 2013) and dendroecology (e.g. Pederson et al. 1997), but the species has not been widely used in climate reconstructions. Pinus taeda was the first conifer to have its genome fully sequenced (Zimin et al. 2014), and a variety of research has since been done to understand its genetic structure and to find and manipulate genes related to productivity and other economically important attributes (e.g. Ding et al. 2024). Due to the species' vast economic importance there has also been a great deal of research in fields such as wood technology, ecophysiology, soil chemistry, and carbon and nutrient cycling.
Loblolly is also quite a popular landscape tree, particularly within its native range. It grows rapidly to large size, at which point it is attractive and makes a good shade tree. Hardy to Zone 7 (cold hardiness limit between -17.7°C and -12.2°C) (Bannister and Neuner 2001).
One of the best places to see old-growth loblolly pines is Congaree National Park, South Carolina, where the trees grows as emergents approximately 46 m tall above a subtropical broadleaf floodplain forest canopy. Another old growth forest remnant occurs in Arkansas at the Levi Wilcoxon Demonstration Forest (LWDF) south of Hamburg (Bragg 2006); I have visited this site, which is also one of the few surviving old P. echinata stands. It is also well represented in a mixed stand with Pinus palustris at Weymouth Woods Sandhills Nature Preserve in North Carolina. Besides these, magnificent landscape trees are fairly common throughout the species' native range.
Taeda is Latin for "torch", but P. palustris, not P. taeda, was used by early colonists to make torches. Palustris is Latin for "swamp", but P. taeda grows in swamps, and P. palustris is an upland species. Each of these two great southern pines should really have had the other species's name (Schultz 1997). The word "loblolly" was originally used to describe surgeon's assistants in the 1600s, and was based on "lolly" which means a thick porridge or gruel. "Loblolly" went a different direction when muddy sinkholes in the forests of Virginia and North Carolina were called loblollys, presumably because their soils resembled a thick porridge and they tend to resemble bowls on the landscape. This pine was commonly associated with those bowls, growing in a matrix of more upland species such as Pinus palustris or P. rigida.
In 1971, astronaut Stuart Roosa (a former USFS smokejumper) took a variety of tree seeds to the Moon on the Apollo 14 mission, including Pinus taeda. The seeds orbited the moon but did not land; on their return, they were distributed to various parties and, especially in the bicentennial year of 1976, many were planted and survive to this day. NASA provides a list of the planting locations.
Loblolly pine is the state tree of Arkansas, and remains the most economically important tree in the state (Klingaman 2007).
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[NCDC 2006] Data accessed at the National Climatic Data Center World Data Center for Paleoclimatology Tree-Ring Data Search Page. http://hurricane.ncdc.noaa.gov/pls/paleo/fm_createpages.treering, accessed 2006.09.08, now defunct.
Native American Ethnobotany Database. 2025. Results of search for the named species of Pinus. Available: http://naeb.brit.org/, accessed 2025.03.16.
Payne, J. (ed.). 2025. The 2024 Register of National Champion Trees. National Champion Tree Program, https://nationalchampiontree.org/.
Pederson, Neil. 2025. Eastern OLDLIST. https://dendro.cnre.vt.edu/olds/detail.cfm?genus=Pinus&species=taeda, accessed 2025.03.01.
Pederson, N., R. H. Jones, and R. R. Sharitz. 1997. Age structure of old-growth loblolly pine stands in a floodplain forest. Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society 124(2):111-123.
Pickens, Bill. [no date]. Loblolly or Longleaf Pine? (PowerPoint presentation, North Carolina Forest Service.) https://www.nclongleaf.org/pdfs/Loblolly_or_Longleaf_Pine_Pickens.pdf, accessed 2025.03.05.
Pile, L. S.; Wang, G. G.; Knapp, B. O.; et al. 2017. Comparing morphology and physiology of southeastern US Pinus seedlings: implications for adaptation to surface fire regimes. Annals of Forest Science 74(4). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13595-017-0666-6.
Samuelson, Lisa J., Thomas L. Eberhardt, Stan M. Bartkowiak, and Kurt H. Johnsen. 2013. Relationships between climate, radial growth and wood properties of mature loblolly pine in Hawaii and a northern and southern site in the southeastern United States. Forest Ecology and Management 310:786-795.
Saylor, L. C. and K. W. Kang. 1973. A study of sympatric populations of Pinus taeda L. and Pinus serotina Michx. in North Carolina. Journal of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society 89:101-110.
Schultz, Robert I. 1997. The ecology and culture of loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.). Agricultural Handbook 713, USDA Forest Service, Washington DC.
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[USDA] United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. 2025. Climate Change Atlas, loblolly pine (Pinus taeda). (Forecasts for RCP 4.5 emissions scenario). https://www.fs.usda.gov/nrs/atlas/tree/131, accessed 2025.03.15.
Wahlenberg, W. G. 1960. Loblolly pine, its use, ecology, regeneration, protection, growth and management. Durham, NC: Duke University School of Forestry. 603 p.
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An 1891 Map from USDA showing the detailed range of the species at that time.
Elwes and Henry 1906-1913 at the Biodiversity Heritage Library. This series of volumes, privately printed, provides some of the most engaging descriptions of conifers ever published. Although they only treat species cultivated in the U.K. and Ireland, and the taxonomy is a bit dated, still these accounts are thorough, treating such topics as species description, range, varieties, exceptionally old or tall specimens, remarkable trees, and cultivation. Despite being over a century old, they are generally accurate, and are illustrated with some remarkable photographs and lithographs.
Technical information and wood photos at The Wood Database.
Wagner, D. B., Nance, W. L., Nelson, C. D., Li, T., Patel, R. N. and Govindaraju, D. R. 1991. Taxonomic patterns and inheritance of chloroplast variation in a survey of Pinus echinata, Pinus elliottii, Pinus palustris, and Pinus taeda. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 22:683-689.
Wu and Raven (1999): the Flora of China, which is available online, has a good description and line drawing (it is a common plantation species in parts of China).
Last Modified 2025-03-16