Of needles and cones

We’re still investigating our first mystery tree in Pennsylvania, which is a species of evergreen growing just outside my cottage. Unlike other evergreens I've known, this one has some unique growth habits which we will revisit in a day or two.

By my best educated guess, what we have here is an Eastern White Pine. However, until that is confirmed, we’ll just keep looking and hypothesizing.

In these images we see the needles and cones of our specimen. I’ve placed them in front of my hand so that you can see them better with the contrast from the background, and so that you have a sense of size.

I’ve also included an image of the leaf litter… there are so many beautiful things to see on the ground, and in this image we have the benefit of golden sunset light!