Pitch Pine is a hard pine having its needles in bundles of 3's that are stiff, though not real hard, and 3 to 5 inches long. It is common for some trees to have sprouts of needles on the trunk. Its oval cones are 2 to 3.5 inches long and each scale is tipped with a prickle. Its native range is from coastal Maine down along the coast into Maryland and in the Appalachians from western New England down to northern Georgia. It grows in acid, sandy, gravelly, and serpentine soils that are well-drained to dry. It grows fast in nature of about 2 to 3 feet/year and lives about 90 to 150 years. It forms a short taproot, but is easy to transplant if root pruned and moved in early spring. I did find one specimen planted in a residential side yard in Downingtown, PA, and a few specimens at Morris Arboretum in the Philadelphia area doing well in the good quality clay and slightly acid soil. The reaction of the soil in Downingtown usually is about pH 6.7 to 6.9. I bought a plant about 3 feet high in a 3-gallon pot from Redbud Native Plant Nursery in 2019 and planted it way in the backyard of my spouse's house about 5 miles east of Reading, PA, where I moved in 2022, where it is doing well. It is a pretty conifer that can be a stately large pine or a medium-sized scrubby pine, depending, though it always has some irregularity in the habit. Otherwise, I've seen lots in the serpentine barrens at Nottingham Park in southeast PA, in the pine barrens of south New Jersey, and I've seen it growing as scattered colonies in the Poconos Mountains and the Alleghany Mountains of Pennsylvania. Regular conventional nurseries don't sell this species, but a number of eastern native plant nurseries do. I love it as I do most pine species.

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