With Thanksgiving and the first flakes of the year already past, there's no doubt that the holiday season is in full swing. If you have any doubts, just check out the gorgeously decorated shoppes along the Short North. For many people, the holidays include Christmas and with it a Christmas tree.

Goodale Park also boasts a Christmas tree, though it doesn't don lights or ornaments any more. It was planted in the park after Barry Weber purchased a live ball and burlap tree to use as his Christmas tree. No doubt it brightened spirits that Christmas and continues to in the park now. It's a little bit of Christmas every day in the park.

This tree is a great opportunity to demonstrate how different from us trees grow. Animals, including humans grow by getting bigger. Our whole bodies seem to enlarge as we grow into adults, but for plants this is not the case. The growth for a plant is stacked on to the previous year's growth. This is very evident in our Christmas tree where you can see that the lower branches are tight together and have been sheared to make a nice full Christmas tree, but the upper branches, which have never been trimmed, are open and gallant. We're able to see the exact point in this tree's life when it was transplanted, by the new open growth atop the tight Christmas tree look. Almost all trees grow in this fashion and it holds true the whole tree over so on twigs you can see where the new growth has extended the end of the branch. A trained eye can count back the years of growth and see how well a tree is growing. The growth of pines makes it even easier to note the growth of this tree as each layer or whorl of branches represents a year's growth. We can see that after the tree was transplanted into the fertile soil of the park it has really taken off! This particular Christmas tree surely brought plenty of joy to the family who celebrated with it. Yet, even with a storybook finish for this Eastern White Pine, the only one in the park, it has a history that pales in comparison to the role that Eastern White Pine has played in our country's history, especially in our beginning.

Eastern White Pine's exploitation was immediate and intense and lead to our first forest conservation laws. This is saying something since the first mill was built in York Maine in 1623. However, most of the timber at that time was not meant for the U.S. It was shipped not only to England, but to Spain, Portugal, Africa, the West Indies and ultimately, densely forested Madagascar. Why? White Pine wood is the softest of all pines of Eastern America, but in proportion to its weight, it is amazingly strong. Because of its size and strength it could be sold for ship masts longer and taller than any other known part of the world was then producing. This couldn't be overemphasized to a country like England which had long harvested theirs and grew no mast wood at all. Further, they were perpetually at war with all other navies of the world. England at the time was importing Scotch Pine masts from Prussia, Russia and Sweden who held monopolies on it. This was agonizing for England and further, the Danes controlled the only water passage of these goods. American colonists quickly grew rich with government contracts and trading with foreign countries and held political power commensurate with their wealth in the formative colonies.

The trouble came during the reign of William and Mary who by royal decree reserved the grandest specimens for the use of the Royal Navy. They looked on aghast when pioneers were advancing far beyond the land grants into "Crown Lands" and chopped down or even burned the finest along with the lesser to clear the land for farming. To the American pioneers it appeared that these "Crown Lands" were possibly to be sold to London land speculators, and also appeared to them to be Indian country theirs for the taking. From here proclamations, laws and royal orders followed one after another to curb what they referred to as "timber stealing" while the colonists practically considered it the Lord's work. This continued until 1761 when Britain passed a law stating that any and all White Pines of mast size were property of her Majesty and not to be cut under penalty of losing your land. A spy network was even set up that gave the land to the spy who caught the thief. Unfortunately for the British, Americans wouldn't turn on each other so easily, so British agents eventually drove loggers from their homes and burned some saw mills. The Americans retaliated by creating their own "Swamp Law" that made it unhealthy for British agents to travel without escorting troops.

When the revolution sparked, Americans quickly realized that their masts may come back to them carrying loads of British troops so Congress stopped the export of everything, including mast wood, to England in 1774. As you can imagine sawmills were hotly contested during the war, and ships carrying mast logs were even more so. Because of the embargo British ships were again forced to use Scotch Pine and battle French ships of tall strong and light White Pine masts from the U.S. So important was White Pine wood and contentious this issue that the first flag of our revolutionary forces bore a White Pine tree. Later, on November 1, 1777 the Ranger Captained by John Paul Jones set to sea with three of the tallest White Pine masts ever known carrying a new flag, the Stars and Stripes.

Beyond its role in the revolution, Eastern White Pine has literally and figuratively built this nation with far too many uses to list. Most notably right now would be that White Pine is the 2nd most popular Christmas tree sold in Ohio behind Scotch Pine. It's not hard to see why when you find one clothed in bluish green long soft needles and twinkling with lights and ornaments.

Whatever holiday you celebrate this time of year, the Friends wish you the very best and season's greetings.

~Rick Frantz