Pinus merkusii, the Merkus pine
Description
Pinus merkusii is a medium-sized to large
tree, reaching tall and with a trunk diameter of up to . The bark is orange-red, thick and deeply fissured at the base of the trunk, and thin and flaky in the upper crown. The
leaves ('needles') are in pairs, very slender, long and less than thick, green to yellowish green.
The conifer cone are narrow conic, long and broad at the base when closed, green at first, ripening glossy red-brown. They open to 4–5 cm broad at maturity to release the seeds. The seeds are long, with a wing, and are wind-dispersed.
Related species
Pinus merkusii is closely related to the
Tenasserim pine (
P. latteri), which occurs farther north in southeast Asia from
Myanmar to
Vietnam; some botanists treat the two as conspecific (under the name
P. merkusii, which was described first), but
P. latteri differs in longer () and stouter (over 1 mm thick) leaves and larger cones with thicker scales, the cones often remaining closed for some time after maturity. It is also related to the group of
Mediterranean pines including
Aleppo pine and
Turkish pine, which share many features with it.
Distribution
It can be found mainly in
Indonesia in the mountains of northern
Sumatra, and with two outlying populations in central Sumatra on
Mount Kerinci and
Mount Talang, and in the
Philippines on
Mindoro and in the Zambales Mountains on western
Luzon. Isolated populations of
Pinus merkusii can be found in Mainland Southeast Asia, such as Kirirom National Park, on the Cardamom Mountains in
Cambodia and Bidoup Núi Bà National Park on the Đà Lạt Plateau in
Vietnam.
The population in central Sumatra, between 1° 40' and 2° 06' S latitude, is the only natural occurrence of any member of the Pinaceae south of the Equator. It generally occurs at moderate altitudes, mostly , but occasionally as low as and up to .
