#pitch pine

Plant of the Day

Tuesday 25 March 2025

The prickly seed cones of Pinus muricata (Bishop pine, obispo, pricklecone pine, dwarf marine pine, umbrella pine, bull pine, pitch pine, Santa Cruz Island pine) can persist on a tree for many years. The cones mature in 2 years but may persist for up to 70 years or more; with old cones being enveloped by growing branches or the trunk. Seeds are released by fire from ‘serotinous’ pine cones melting the resin, opening up the cones and releasing seeds that are distributed by gravity and wind.

on the sentience of trees

Always travel with naturalists - that way they will always want to go for a walk as much as you do. That's my current theory anyway.

The above is the path that leads (indirectly) to Pest House Cemetery. Also known as the Unnamed Cemetery, Pest House is the final resting place of fourteen people who died in a smallpox epidemic in the mid-1800s. The resting place is quite far from Provincetown proper (way out into the National Seashore) and has long since been overtaken by the forest. If not for Atlas Obscura, it is likely that the cemetery would be known at all today.

The scrub forest was gorgeous: mostly beech, oak, and pitch pines.

I have a deep love and appreciation for pine trees. At home, I am most familiar with Eastern White Pine but I love getting to visit with Pitch Pine when we go to the Cape. It truly has the most beautiful pine cones.

As often happens in the springtime, there were wonders everywhere to be discovered. The ground was covered with lilies of the valley and starflowers. The Starflower (Lysimachia borealis) is a beautiful North American native that grows in the woodlands. It should not be confused with Borage which is also called sometimes known colloquially as Starflower (and looks somewhat similar) - they come from entirely different families.

Isn't it pretty?

We had to offroad it a bit to find Pest House - we were told to "take a right at the stone marker" and go "over hill and dale". Wear good shoes if you want to find this cemetery - it's truly been lost to the beech forests.

The cemetery itself is small - we couldn't even find all fourteen of the gravemarkers. Each is merely labeled with a number though you can go online now and see the names of each individual buried here. The forest has truly overtaken this space and it had a feeling of peace that was somewhat surprising given the gruesome manner of the deaths of those buried here.

Still, as one might expect of such a locale, you couldn't get past the feeling of being watched in Pest House, or really in the forest as a whole. It may have just been the beech trees but those of us that were sensitive to energies could feel something more.

After saying thank you to the spirits for letting us visit (and leaving a few small gifts behind), we ventured onwards.