Nature Bulletin No. 173-A   December 12, 1964
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
Seymour Simon, President
Roland F. Eisenbeis, Supt. of Conservation

****:NATIVE EVERGREENS

There are few native evergreens in this region. Your Christmas tree -- 
unless it is one of those glistening imitations -- is likely to be a young 
spruce, balsam fir, or Scotch pine from Wisconsin, Michigan, 
Minnesota or Canada, perhaps a Douglas fir from the northwest.

Long years ago, at Christmas time in many parts of rural Illinois, it 
was customary to search the hillsides and pastures for a well-shaped 
young cedar to be brought home as a Christmas tree. Or, if there was 
none, a young oak. They were decorated with strings of popcorn, 
cranberries and tinsel, chains of colored paper, and lighted with 
candles wired to the branches.

Red cedar, a juniper, is the most common native evergreen in Illinois 
and Indiana. It is usually small, straight, narrow and conical in shape. 
It has two kinds of dark green pointed needles (leaves): one kind about 
1/2 inch long; the other very short and scalelike. The male and female 
cones (flowers) are borne on separate trees. The fruits are little bluish 
berrylike cones eaten by many birds in winter. The reddish aromatic 
wood is useful for pencils and moth-proof chests and closets. Cedar 
fence posts are famous for their durability.

The earliest surveyors of Cook County recorded the kinds of vegetation 
encountered as they ran their lines. Their notebooks contain several 
references to pines and cedars, chiefly near the lake. Gurdon S. 
Hubbard, speaking of Fort Dearborn in his autobiography, said: "Back 
of it flowed the Chicago River which, as late as 1827, emptied into 
Lake Michigan at a point known as "The Pines", a clump of a hundred 
or more stunted pine trees on the sand-hills about a mile from the 
fort."

Presumably, those and the pines observed by surveyors were Jack 
Pines. That conifer, found on poor sandy soils on the Waukegan dunes 
and in the Illinois Beach State Park, never became more than a small 
scrubby tree in this region. It has small cones and short stiff curved 
needles growing in pairs -- bundles of two.

Thousands of years ago there were white pine forests here. At the 
Dunes State Park in Indiana there are a number of native white pines, 
and "blow-outs" along that southern shore of Lake Michigan have 
uncovered the stumps of white pines smothered and buried, 5000 or 
more years ago, by the moving sands. There are a few large old white 
pines along the ravines and lake bluff at Glencoe.

There are some big white pines at Starved Rock State Park, and some 
fine stands at White Pines State Park. Some of the older trees are 80 
feet tall with trunk diameters of 24 inches or more. The lower 
branches tend to die and drop off, but the upper plumelike branches 
grow out horizontally like the spokes of a wheel.

This tree has long blue-green needles that grow in bundles of 5, and 
long large cones. Like all pines, the male and female flowers are borne 
separately on the same tree. Its wood, being soft, light, even-textured 
and remarkably durable, has always been in great demand. The 
buildings in early Chicago and the farm buildings in northeastern 
Illinois were built with white pine lumber from the great forests that 
grew in the lake states. They enabled this city to rebuild after the great 
fire in 1871. White pine trees became the masts for many a sailing 
ship.

Four native evergreen shrubs, now rare in the Chicago region, are: the 
Arbor Vitae or White Cedar, which prefers wet places and has short, 
pointed leaves growing in flat sprays; the Trailing Juniper, found in 
dense carpets on the Waukegan dunes; the Common Juniper, growing 
as prickly mats on sandy barrens; and the American Yew on limestone 
cliffs at the Starved Rock, White Pines, and Apple River Canyon state 
parks.

Have a merry Christmas!