181. Blue Pine

 This blog is part of my belief that gratitude brings happiness and meaning to life, so the entries are of simple things for which I am grateful.

borrowed image

In the upstairs landing and up the stairwell of my house there is cedar wainscoting and I took a couple of hours last week to stain it (we’re still smelling it!). I like the look of the traditional wood paneling that is common throughout North Idaho, including pine and blue pine, and the cedar that’s in my home. The staining process got me to thinking about paneling and I couldn’t help but focus on the unique aspects of blue pine that I often see in other buildings.

Blue pine is the wood that comes from pine trees that have been infected, usually killed, by the mountain pine beetle. The bluish tints that go streaking throughout the wood come from a fungus that is spread by the beetle. Oddly enough, it can be quite expensive because of its unique appearance. The wood works best for decorative purposes such as paneling or other woodwork, like furniture. But like all soft woods, you have to be careful with blue pine in furniture if you don’t want nicks or dings in the surface. It certainly wouldn’t make good flooring because of that, but there are now several types of vinyl floorings that take on the appearance of blue pine.

In these days you pay extra for blue pine paneling, but in the old days you can see it on walls in small sections. The entire wall will not be blue pine because it was just a fluke that any of it turned out to be blue and the carpenter probably just ran out of the good pine so they ended up using a little blue. I think typically the pine free of the blue was preferred because a bit of blue pine just ruined the consistency of the look. (Somewhat like my now obvious sections of staining on the cedar wainscoting that need a second coat!) I also wonder if the bark beetle was less prolific in the area. I certainly don’t remember large stands of infested pine trees, but that’s also my memory as a child. It was in the early part of the twentieth century that the white pine tree—Idaho’s state tree—was nearly decimated by blister rust and that’s the primary reason you can’t find big white pine trees. My memory is only a little more than fifty years…

At any rate, I like the look of blue pine. I don’t have any and I don’t want to encourage its use too much because I love the forest. But I also know that its use salvages dead trees that have little other use. At any rate, I do appreciate its appearance and I’m going to have no problem buying some vinyl flooring that has imitated the look of blue pine.