Pine / Edinburgh

[meteorquake]

Hello folks!

 

I've attached a PDF of photos of a pine I'd like to identify. You may well need to zoom out to get a full page first. Salient info about the tree is as follows...

 

Photos : 2014-05-07, Edinburgh

 

Tree H x W : 5.6 x 4 m

 

Bole : 1.5 m x 32 cm (with smaller branches lower than this)

 

Needles : 50 x 1.5 mm, Not Stiff, Not Spiky, 2 per Fascicle, Profile Thin Rectangle with Top Slightly Rounded and Bottom Flat, Whorl Gap ~ 5 cm. [Note that the second to last picture looks like serrated needle edges but I think that's just an effect of the shadow cast on the uneven surface below!]

 

Cones : The one in Photo is 65 x 35 mm (Closed, Fallen) with Stalk 10 mm, Scale Width 10 mm

 

The cone looks a bit like a Scots and there's orange on the bark, but in other ways it seems to differ.

 

Thanks so much in advance; any comments about the reasons for the ID would be much appreciated,

 

david

Pine 4.pdf

Edited May 9, 2014 by meteorquake

[daltontrees]

It looks very much like Pinus sylvestris to me. The orange bark is a good indicator and could only realy be P. sylvestris or P. parvifolia. The latter has needles that are markedly longer.

 

What is it that's making you think it might not be P. sylvestris?

[meteorquake]

Oh I think it's just that in my mind are the plates of orange and empty branchless trunks and fuller needled branches, I'm only just getting round to examining them all now - I started off on wild flowers and put off conifers before being a big scary group, so I am just now tackling them Probably a case of the more pines you know there are, the less confident you become when you meet one!!

david

[daltontrees]

Oh I think it's just that in my mind are the plates of orange and empty branchless trunks and fuller needled branches, I'm only just getting round to examining them all now - I started off on wild flowers and put off conifers before being a big scary group, so I am just now tackling them Probably a case of the more pines you know there are, the less confident you become when you meet one!!

david

 

There's soooo many pines, but in scotland probably 80% will be sylvestris, the rest will be nigra, contorta and just the occasional other. I found a parviflora at Smeaton, took me forever to pin it down. Last week came across 3 heldrichii, took me 15 minutes to get comfortable with the indentification.

 

A few pines have needles in groups of 3 or 5. They're easy because that rapidly narrows it down. For 3 think perhaps rigida, for 5 think wallichiana or strobus. I'm not absolutely sure, but I think the 3 and 5 needled pines have 2 vascular bundles per needle, which if you've got a really good hand lens is a nice identifying feature.

I think I might have put a thin section photo of a single vascular bundle needle in the 'trees under the microscope' thread her on Arbtalk. Next time I spot a wallichiana I'l nick a few needles and see if I can section them.

[meteorquake]

Thank you very much Jules!

I have a 3-needle one here which I think might be Monterey, I should post it when I get some good photos

Also I think I would benefit when I get a chance from a week in the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens nearby; I have just got a list of all their trees, and also got a list of all the council trees (50,000), just to give myself a kick-start!

d

[meteorquake]

...bet I'll go back and find it's rigida though! d

[daltontrees]

Thank you very much Jules!

I have a 3-needle one here which I think might be Monterey, I should post it when I get some good photos

Also I think I would benefit when I get a chance from a week in the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens nearby; I have just got a list of all their trees, and also got a list of all the council trees (50,000), just to give myself a kick-start!

d

 

I love the Botanics, could easily spend a week there. But if you really want to do it properly, you could spenda week doing the entire Botanics. Some of the sites are more suitable than others for some tree types, for example Benmore for conifers. So you could start in Edinburgh, go to Dawyck, then Logan, then Benmore then back to Edinburgh. It's the sort of saddo self-indulgent holiday I would do if I didn't have a family who sigh every time I wander off to look at a tree in a park.

[meteorquake]

I SO know that feeling!

With wild plants I've learnt to swoop in with a camera and snap like mad in all the right places, with a 30x jeweller's loupe over the lens, before moving on, so that I can decipher it all later at home!!!

I'll definitely try the botanics first, it can easily be a fun day for others, and then try to head to Dawyck as the next

david