Red pine

Eastern Canadian Forest-Boreal transition

Eastern Great Lakes lowland forests

Northern Rockies conifer forests

Northern Tallgrass prairie

South Central Rockies forests

Wasatch and Uinta montane forests

Western Great Lakes forests

Central Tallgrass prairie

Central-Southern Cascades Forests

One of the largest and fastest-growing native hardwoods of eastern and central North America - a streambank and bottomland tree reaching 50 to 80 feet (occasionally far more) with a broad, open-rounded crown. Its glossy triangular (deltoid) leaves with coarse marginal teeth and flattened petioles flutter and clatter in the wind, and female trees release the cottony seed fluff that gives the tree its name. Fast, tough, and tolerant of drought and urban conditions, but messy and weak-wooded - Missouri Botanical Garden calls it generally inappropriate for ornamental or urban use, better suited to rural lowspots and stream corridors.

What it needs

Conditions

Light

Full sun

Water

Moderate water

Spacing

25 ft

Habit

Tall, narrow, conical needled evergreen with a straight central trunk and horizontal to ascending branching, opening into an oval to rounded crown with age. Notably slender for its height - 50 to 80 feet tall against only 20 to 25 feet wide, and less frequently to 125 feet.

Care tips

•

Snap a needle to confirm it. Red pine needles break cleanly in half when bent; the two-needle pines it is confused with, including Austrian and Scots pine, bend instead. It is the fastest field test in the genus.

•

Do not plant it south of zone 5. Missouri Botanical Garden says so directly, and hot humid summers are what kills it - the failure is slow decline rather than a dramatic death, which is why it keeps getting planted too far south.

•

Give it sand and full sun, and nothing overhead. It has very little shade tolerance, so a red pine under or beside a spreading hardwood is a red pine on the way out.

Lifecycle

Planting

Plant in spring in full sun, in average, medium-moisture, well-drained sandy loam. Missouri Botanical Garden is explicit that it has very little tolerance for shade - this is not a tree to slot under an existing canopy. Its best growth is in areas with cool summers and cold winters. Avoid heavy wet clay and avoid alkaline soil.

Transplanting

Transplants well as young balled-and-burlapped or container stock in spring, which is why it was viable for plantation work at scale. Larger specimens move less reliably.

Early growth

Moderate and steady rather than fast. Very little pruning is wanted: red pine builds a naturally straight leader and regular whorled branching, and cutting into old wood does not resprout. Remove only dead or damaged limbs.

Maturity

Long-lived and low-maintenance within its climate. Missouri Botanical Garden lists needle cast, blight, cankers, root rots and rusts among its diseases, with budworms and sawflies as the notable insects. Most red pine failures outside the north, though, are climate rather than pathogen: a stressed tree in a hot summer region simply declines.

Propagation

From seed in chestnut-brown cones that mature in their second year. Cold-stratify and sow; germination is reliable, and the species regenerates naturally on bare mineral sand after fire.

Plant this, not that

Better fit for this place

For Chicago, IL, these are replacement suggestions: similar plants with a stronger hardiness fit now and/or in 2050.

Populus deltoides

Eastern cottonwood

Better fit now and in 2050

Now: well-suited

2050: well-suited

Acer negundo

Boxelder

Boxelder (Acer negundo) is the maple that does not look like a maple. Instead of a single lobed leaf it carries compound leaves of three to five toothed leaflets, close enough to poison ivy that people regularly misidentify young shoots, and it is one of the very few dioecious maples - male and female flowers on separate trees, so only the females carry the familiar paired samaras. It is native across an extraordinary sweep of North America, from Maine to Manitoba and south to Florida, Texas and central Mexico, and it is genuinely at home on riverbanks and floodplains where its speed and flood tolerance are assets. In a garden it is usually a volunteer rather than a choice. It grows fast, breaks in storms, seeds everywhere, and hosts the boxelder bug, which overwinters on house walls in numbers that make it a household nuisance rather than a garden one. The case for it is narrow but real: it establishes on ground where better trees fail, in cold northern climates and on raw disturbed sites, and it is a documented larval host for cecropia and a valued early honey-bee forage.

Better fit now and in 2050

Now: well-suited

2050: well-suited

Celtis occidentalis

Common hackberry

A tough, widely adaptable native shade tree of central and northeastern North America, growing 40 to 60 feet tall and wide with a rounded, spreading crown. Mature gray bark develops the warty corky ridges that make it instantly recognizable, and the round purple drupes are edible and feed dozens of bird species. One of the most pollution- and stress-tolerant street and shade trees available - it shrugs off wind, urban conditions, and wet, dry, or poor soils alike.

A tough, aromatic native conifer of eastern North America - actually a juniper, not a true cedar - with scale-like evergreen foliage and a broadly conical to columnar form. Missouri Botanical Garden calls it the most drought-resistant conifer native to the eastern U.S., thriving on limestone glades, fence rows, and abandoned fields. It is dioecious: female trees carry the powdery blue, berry-like cones that gave the cedar waxwing its name and feed many birds and small mammals through winter.

Full sun / Part shade

Better fit now and in 2050

Now: well-suited

2050: well-suited

Juniperus virginiana

Eastern red cedar

Better fit now and in 2050

Now: well-suited

2050: well-suited

Similar plants

Browse lateral options with similar roles, light needs, size, or native-range overlap; these are not filtered for a better climate fit.

Thuja occidentalis

American arborvitae

A dense, conical-to-narrow-pyramidal evergreen tree native to eastern and central North America, prized as a screening and foundation conifer. Flat, fan-like sprays of scale-like, aromatic yellow-green foliage clothe the tree from the ground up, and red-brown bark exfoliates on mature trunks. Wild trees can reach 40 to 60 feet but cultivated plants typically stay near 20 to 30 feet; small urn-shaped cones and dense evergreen cover make it valuable food and shelter for birds.

A medium-to-large native shade tree of central and eastern North America, reaching 50 to 80 feet with an ovate-rounded crown and large, asymmetric heart-shaped leaves. In June it carries pale-yellow, intensely fragrant flowers on pendulous cymes - each cluster hung from a distinctive strap-like leafy bract - that ripen into pea-sized nutlets. The fragrant June bloom is a premier nectar source: Missouri Botanical Garden lists it as attracting bees and butterflies, and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center flags it as having special value to both native and honey bees.

The only native U.S. holly with both spiny green leaves and bright red berries - an upright, pyramidal, broadleaf evergreen tree that slowly matures to 15 to 30 feet in cultivation (to 50 feet in the wild). Thick, leathery, deep green leaves bear spiny marginal teeth, and pollinated female trees carry showy red-to-orange drupes that ripen in fall and persist through winter as bird food. This is the classic "Christmas holly" of wreaths and decorations.

A small-to-medium understory tree of dry, rocky eastern-North-American woods, named for its drooping clusters of papery, sac-like seed pods that resemble the fruit of hops. The birch-like, sharply-serrated leaves turn an undistinguished yellow in fall, and reddish-brown male catkins persist on the bare branches through winter. Also called ironwood for its extremely hard, dense wood; tough, low-maintenance, and drought-tolerant once established.

A tough, medium-sized native tree of the eastern and midwestern United States, grown as much for its showy edible orange fruit as for its distinctive thick, dark gray bark broken into rectangular blocks. Small urn-shaped white-to-greenish-yellow flowers open in May and June, and the sweet fruit ripens after frost. Largely dioecious - a female tree needs a male pollinizer nearby to set fruit - and notably drought- and walnut-tolerant once established.

Full sun / Part shade

A small native deciduous tree (or thicket-forming, suckering shrub) of eastern and central North America, grown for clouds of fragrant white 5-petaled flowers that open in March before the leaves and for the edible red plums that follow in early summer. It forms a broad, spreading crown with attractive dark reddish-brown twigs that sometimes carry thorny lateral branchlets. A documented larval host for swallowtails and other butterflies, with flowers of special value to native, bumble, and honey bees.