The Italian stone pine, botanical name Pinus pinea, also known as the Mediterranean stone pine is a tree from the pine family, Pinaceae. The tree is native plant to the Mediterranean region, occurring in Southern Europe and the Levant. The species was introduced into North Africa millennia ago, and is also naturalized in the Canary Islands, South Africa and New South Wales.
Stone pines have been used and cultivated for their edible since prehistoric times. They are widespread in horticultural cultivation as , planted in gardens and parks around the world. This plant has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Description
The stone pine is a
evergreen tree that can exceed in height, but is more typical. In youth, it is a bushy globe, in mid-age an umbrella canopy on a thick trunk, and, in maturity, a broad and flat crown over in width.
The bark is thick, red-brown and deeply fissured into broad vertical plates.
- Foliage
The flexible mid-green leaves are needle-like, in bundles of two, and are long (exceptionally up to ). Young trees up to 5–10 years old bear juvenile leaves, which are very different, single (not paired), long, glaucous blue-green; the adult leaves appear mixed with juvenile leaves from the fourth or fifth year on, replacing it fully by around the tenth year. Juvenile leaves are also produced in regrowth following injury, such as a broken shoot, on older trees.
The cones are broad, ovoid, long, and take 36 months to mature, longer than any other pine. The seeds (, piñones, pinhões, pinoli, or pignons) are large, long, and pale brown with a powdery black coating that rubs off easily, and have a rudimentary wing that falls off very easily. The wing is ineffective for wind dispersal, and the seeds are animal-dispersed, originally mainly by the Iberian magpie, but in recent history largely by humans.
Distribution and habitat
The prehistoric range of
Pinus pinea included North Africa in the Sahara Desert and
Maghreb regions during a more humid climate period, in present-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. Its contemporary natural range is in the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub
biome and countries, including the following:
- Southern Europe
The Iberian conifer forests ecoregion of the Iberian Peninsula in Spain and Portugal; the Italian sclerophyllous and semi-deciduous forests ecoregion in France and Italy; the Tyrrhenian-Adriatic sclerophyllous and mixed forests ecoregion of southern Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia; the Illyrian deciduous forests of the eastern coast of the Ionian Sea and Adriatic Sea in Albania and Croatia; the Crimean Submediterranean forest complex ecoregion on Krasnodar Krai (Russia) and the Crimea Peninsula; and the Aegean and Western Turkey sclerophyllous and mixed forests ecoregion of the southern Balkan Peninsula in Greece. In many parts of northern Italy, large parks with pine trees were laid out by the sea. Examples are the Pineta of Jesolo and Barcola, the Urban Beach of Trieste.
In Greece, although the species is not widely distributed,
- Western Asia
In Western Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean conifer-sclerophyllous-broadleaf forests ecoregion in Turkey; and the Southern Anatolian montane conifer and deciduous forests ecoregion in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and in the Palestinian Territories.
- Northern Africa
The Mediterranean woodlands and forests ecoregion of North Africa, in Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria.
- South Africa
In the
Western Cape Province, the pines were according to legend planted by the
French Huguenot refugees who settled at the Cape of Good Hope during the late 17th century and who brought the seeds with them from France. The tree is known in the
Afrikaans language as
kroonden.
Ecology
Pinus pinea is a diagnostic species of the vegetation class
Pinetea halepensis.
Pests
The introduced Western conifer seed bug (
Leptoglossus occidentalis) was accidentally imported with timber to northern Italy in the late 1990s from the western US, and has spread across Europe as an invasive pest species since then. It feeds on the sap of developing conifer cones throughout its life, and its sap-sucking causes the developing seeds to wither and misdevelop. It has destroyed most of the pine nut seeds in Italy, threatening
P. pinea in its
native plant habitats there.
Pestalotiopsis pini (a genus of ascomycete fungi), was found as an emerging pathogen on Pinus pinea in Portugal. Evidence of shoot blight and stem necrosis were found in stone pine orchards and urban areas in 2020. The edible pine nut production has been decreasing in the affected area due to several factors, including pests and diseases. The fungus was found on needles, shoots and trunks of P. pinea and also on Pinus pinaster. Pestalotiopsis fungal species could represent a threat to the health of pine forests in the Mediterranean basin.
Uses
Food
Pinus pinea has been cultivated extensively for at least 6,000 years for its edible pine nuts, which have been trade items since early historic times. The tree has been cultivated throughout the
Mediterranean region for so long that it has naturalized, and is often considered native beyond its natural range.
Ornamental
The tree is among the current symbols of
Rome.
It was first planted in Rome during the
Roman Republic, where many historic
Roman roads, such as the
Appian Way, were (and still are) embellished with lines of stone pines. Stone pines were planted on the hills of the
Bosphorus strait in
Istanbul for
ornamental tree purposes during the
Ottoman Empire period. In Italy, the stone pine has been an aesthetic landscape element since the Italian Renaissance garden period. In the 1700s,
P. pinea began being introduced as an ornamental tree to other Mediterranean climate regions of the world, and is now often found in gardens and parks in South Africa, California, and Australia. It has naturalized beyond cities in South Africa to the extent that it is listed as an
invasive species there. It is also planted in western Europe up to southern Scotland, and on the East Coast of the United States up to New Jersey.
In the United Kingdom it has won the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Small specimens are used for bonsai, and also grown in large pots and planters. The year-old seedlings are seasonally available as table-top tall.
Other
Other products of economic value include
resin, bark for
tannin extraction, and empty pine cone shells for fuel.
Pinus pinea is also currently widely cultivated around the
Mediterranean for environmental protection such as consolidation of
coastal dunes, soil conservation and protection of coastal agricultural crops.
Gallery
Image:Pinus pinea foliage.jpg|Needles of a juvenile (left) and adult (right)
Image:Pinus Pinea juvenile.JPG|Seedling
Image:Pinuspinea.jpg|Close-up of the bark's vertical texture
File:Pinus pinea Bayonne.jpg| Trunk and crown of mature tree
File:Appia antica 2-7-05 048.jpg|Pines on Appian Way
Image:Pines - Villa Borghese - Rome, Italy - DSC04555.jpg|Adult stone pines at Villa Borghese gardens, Rome
Image:0 Pin remarquable de la villa Médicis à Rome (1).JPG|Pine at Villa Medici, Rome
Image:Foro di Augusto din Roma1.jpg|The tree is among the symbols of Rome and its historic streets, such as the Via dei Fori Imperiali.
Image:Yağlıkçı Hacı Reşit Bey and Prenses Rukiye Yalısı on the Bosphorus, Istanbul, Turkey 001.jpg|Stone pines were planted on the hills of the Bosphorus strait in Istanbul for ornamental purposes during the Ottoman period.
File:Алупка,_2019_год,_03.jpg|Stone pines on the Crimean Riviera, Ukraine
File:Stone pine - Pinus pinea.JPG|Fresh shoots with female strobili
File:Young Pinus pinea in Partenit.jpg|Young tree in Crimea, Ukraine
File:Pinus pinea Pompeii.jpg|Tree in Pompeii
External links
