I used to see lots of Jack Pines in north central Minnesota near Brainerd and some in various spots in Wisconsin. I've seen it planted in three spots in northeast Illinois and growing wild in the dunes of northwest Indiana. This species has short, dark green, stiff, needles about 1 to 1.5 inches long in bundles of two. It has scaly and irregular flaky plates of brown-gray bark. In its native wild state, Jack Pine is fast growing of 2 to 3 feet/year and lives about 60 to 100 years. It is often a smaller, scrubby pine of 20 to 30 feet high and almost as wide, but it also can get to 70 to 80 feet high with a trunk diameter of 1 to 1.5 feet. It has a large native range mostly in Canada from Nova Scotia to Saskatchewan and the Yukon, and it is in northern New England, most of Michigan, northwest Indiana, much of Wisconsin, and northern Minnesota. It does well in sandy, acid soils but not in clay soils or alkaline ones. It does well when there are forest fires because the cones open best for that condition to disperse seed and colonize burned over land. It bears lots of small 1 to 2 inch long cones that curve inwards and are closed most of the time and are on the tree all the time. Jack Pine is very similar to the Virginia Pine of the Mid-Atlantic and eastern South that has slightly longer needles.

Reply to this comment