Coach,
Your scouting out cross country trails in a cemetary?
Really?
You all run through a cemetary?
That's disprectful.
White pine will get bigger and thicker than that.
At least the white pine down where I live does.

picture of trunk - stone next to tree is about 30 inches wide

I am amazed by the variability of the picea abies. I stepped off the spread at just over 70 feet. The branches on this tree all shoot out laterally, all most parallel to the ground.

same tree - side branch is over 24 inches thick!

right next to the tree above was a tree with a third of the spread also around 100 feet tall - crazy how different these trees can look.

Looks like the White Pine are two trees that grew together or a seed with two trunks. You can see the "seam" on your second pic. That spruce is quite amazing to keep the bottom branches so horizontal.

Thanks for the pix.

tj

I've seen one open-grown N spruce w/a huge side-branch like that. Rare.

White pine & Norway spruce (& a rare eastern hemlock) are typically the largest conifers in the N American east.

Below is a fastigiate white pine in the VA State Arb:

Yes, among all spruce, it seems Picea abies is most likely to have odd structural anomalies-a co-dominant stem attaining the size of a tree, one tree very narrow, the next very widespreading, etc. I knew of one NS that had co-dominant stems winding around each other right to the top. That tree was at a former workplace of mine and is no longer standing, but quite an interesting thing.

White pine too can have some of these varying structural attributes, but perhaps not to the extent of the NS.

BTW, two of the very best trees, IMO!

+oM