• Ohio is home to many beautiful pine trees that keep their needles year round.pine-tree image by Filip Pivarci from Fotolia.com
  
  Pine trees are conifers or evergreens that bear cones and keep their needles throughout the winter. Unlike other evergreen trees that have needles attached singly to the branches, pine tree needles are arranged in bundles. Ohio is home to over a dozen different tree species belonging to the pine or pinaceae family. Pine trees are evenly distributed throughout the states many forests.
  
  

Red Pine

• Also known as Norway pine despite being native to North America, red pine is a common Ohio tree valued for its pulpwood and lumber. Red pines have a medium growth rate and can grow up to 50 feet in Ohio's seasonal climate. The tree gets its name from the reddish orange color of its young bark which becomes increasingly brown as the bark matures. Red pines close relatives include spruces, larches, firs and hemlocks. The tree grows best in well-drained sterile, acidic, dry and sandy soils. Red pine is particularly vulnerable to salt, and exposure to salt deposition and salt spray can severely damage the tree.
  
  

White Pine

• Widely distributed throughout the Northeast, the white pine or eastern white pine is a very common tree in Ohio. White pine is used for many things, including paper, lumber, landscaping, Christmas trees and telephone poles. White pines are quite large for evergreens, growing up to 80 feet tall and 40 feet wide in Ohio conditions. White pine's thin, bluish green needles grow in clusters of five, which is one of the trees main distinguishing features. This trees grows best in well-drained, acidic and moist soils with full sun exposure. White pine weevils can cause problems for white pine trees because they bore into terminal shoots and can disturb its growth.
  
  

Loblolly Pine

• Loblolly pines are found in the warmer region of southern Ohio where they are widely used as reforestation trees. Valued for its pulpwood and lumber, loblolly pine is also used in erosion control and landscaping. This rapid-growing tree grows to approximately 50 feet tall and can be 30 feet wide in normal Ohio conditions. Also known as old field pine, loblolly Pine thrives in moderately-drained, acidic, moist soils with full sun. Though the loblolly pine is highly adaptable and hardy, its enemy the pine beetle can cause growth issues. The tree's long needles can grow up to 9 inches long.