Pinus pinea L.

subg. Pinus sect. Pinea subsect. Pineae
Common Name: Italian Stone Pine
Family: Pinaceae Lindley

Country of Origin: S. Europe to Lebanon

Description: A tree 12-25(35) m tall, trunk often short and commonly slightly sinuous. Crown highly distinctive (shape shared only by P. nelsonii of NE Mexico), globose and shrubby when young, later domed and becoming very broad low-rounded with age; not conic except in first two years from seed; with long branches rising at 30°-60° above horizontal; branch tips upswept to vertical. Bark thick, plated, deeply fissured, red-brown to orange with blackish edges to the plates. Shoots usually uninodal, very rarely multinodal on vigorous young trees; moderately stout, yellow-buff, rough with persistent decurrent scale-leaf bases. Buds ovoid-acute, 7-20 mm, with red-brown scales with long free tips revolute and fringed with white hairs. Adult leaves mid-green, retained for 2-4 years, with a persistent 1-1.5 cm sheath, in fascicles of two, 10-18(28) cm long, about 1.5 mm thick, with serrulate margins and fine lines of stomata on both faces. The juvenile leaves are glaucous, 1.5-4cm long, and continue to be grown for 3-10 years, mixed with the first adult leaves from the third year. Cones on short stout stalks, symmetrical, broad ovoid to globose, 8-12(15) cm long, 5-11(12) cm broad when closed, resembling a children's comic idea of a hand-grenade (!); green, ripening shiny chestnut-brown in April three years after pollination (the longest maturation period of any pine). The scales are broad, thick, woody, very stiff; the apophysis is bulbous, 15-20 × 15-20 mm, smoothly rounded; due to the three-year maturation, the dorsal grey-buff umbo is double, with an inner umbo (first year's growth) and a concentric outer umbo (second year); the inner umbo has a very short stout reflexed mucro. The seeds are pale brown thickly covered with a black soot-like powder, 15-20 × 10 mm with a loosely attached vestigial 3-8 mm yellow-buff wing. The cones open on ripening or up to a year later, invariably shedding all the infertile basal scales to allow the fertile scales to open more widely; the large seeds are dispersed by birds, mainly Cyanopica cyanus (azure-winged magpie), and in the last 6,000+ years, by humans, which has considerably extended the pine's distribution.⁴

Accession Data:

Accession # 201900002
Source: John Korte ex RocketFarms.com
Accession Date: 12-31-2018
Bench: 2104 - MED:Mediterranean D
- Currently: active - healthy
- Qty: 1 confirmed on 01-21-2025

Classification:

Division: Pinophyta
Class: Pinopsida
SubClass: Pinidae
Order: Pinales
SubOrder:
Family: Pinaceae
SubFamily: Pinoideae
Tribe:
SubTribe:

Flowering Data:

This accession has been observed in bloom on:

Year	Jan				Feb				Mar					Apr				May				Jun					Jul				Aug				Sep					Oct				Nov				Dec
2025
2024
2023
2022

References (internal):

EEB Greenhouse Holdings native to: Baleares / Corse / France / Portugal / Spain / Albania / Greece / Italy / Kriti / Sicilia / Cyprus / East Aegean Is. / Lebanon-Syria / Turkey /

References (external):

The Plant List (2013). Version 1.1. Last accessed on Monday, 31 December, 2018.
WCSP (2015). World Checklist of Selected Plant Families. Facilitated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Last accessed on Monday, 31 December, 2018.
Pinus pinea at WikiSpecies. Last accessed on Monday, 31 December, 2018.
Pinus pinea at The Gymnosperm Database. Last accessed on Monday, 31 December, 2018.

data regenerated on Tue, 21 Jan 2025 10:09:03 -0500 [bcm v4.0]

Plant Biodiversity Conservatory and Research Core

Accession Data:

Pinus pinea L.

subg. Pinus sect. Pinea subsect. Pineae

Accession Data:

Classification:

Flowering Data:

References (internal):

References (external):

Images:

Additional images for this accession:

Current Accessions in the Pinaceae

Subfamily Abietoideae

Subfamily Laricoideae

Subfamily Pinoideae