Stone pine

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pine stone , botanical name Pine pinea , also known as Italian pine stone , pine umbrella and umbrella parasol , is a tree of pine family ( Pinaceae ). The tree is native to the Mediterranean region, occurring in southern Europe, Israel, Lebanon and Syria. It is also naturalized in North Africa, the Canary Islands, South Africa and New South Wales. This species was introduced to North Africa thousands of years ago, so long that it is essentially indistinguishable from being a native.

Pine pines have been used and cultivated for their edible pine nuts since prehistoric times. They are widespread in the cultivation of horticulture as ornamental trees, planted in gardens and parks around the world. This plant has been awarded the Royal Horticultural Society of Garden Merit.

Video Stone pine

Distribution

The prehistoric range Pine pinea includes North Africa in the Sahara Desert and the Maghreb region during more humid climatic periods, in present-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Its contemporary natural heritage lies in the Mediterranean forests, forests, and ecoregion and country bioma scrubs, including the following:

Southern Europe

Iberian coniferous forest tails from the Iberian Peninsula in Spain and Portugal; sclerophyllous and forest ecoregions semidekuat in France and Italy; sclerophyllous Tyrrhenian-Adriatic and mixed forest ecoregions from southern Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia; Illyrian deciduous forests on the eastern shores of the Ionian and Adriatic Seas in Croatia and Albania; and Aegean and sclerofillous Western Turks and mixed forests on the southern Balkan Peninsula in Greece.

In Greece, although species are not widely distributed, vast pine forests exist in western Peloponnese in Strofylia on a peninsula that separates the Kalogria Lagoon from the Mediterranean Sea. This coastal forest has a length of at least 8 miles, with dense stands and high pine is mixed with Pinus halepensis . Currently, Pinus halepensis competes with stone pine in many forest locations. The other location in Greece is in Koukounaries on the north Aegean island of Skiathos in the southwest corner of the island. It is a half mile rock and Aleppo pine lying between the lagoon and the Aegean Sea.

West Asia

In West Asia, the rich tropical ecosystem region of Africa is rich in conifer-sclerophyllous; and the South Anatolian mountain conifer and the fallen forest ecoregions in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and northern Israel.

North Africa

Mediterranean forests and North African forest eco-regions, in Morocco and Algeria.

South Africa

In Western Cape Province, where the pines fit the legend planted by French Huguenot refugees who settled in the Cape of Good Hope during the late 17th century and brought the seeds from France. Known in Afrikaans as kroonden .

Maps Stone pine

Description

The rock pin is a conifer type of conifer that can exceed 25 meters (82 feet), but 12-20 meters (39-66 feet) is more distinctive. In youth, this is a dense ball, at the middle of the umbrella canopy on a thick rod, and, in maturity, the crown is wide and flat over 8 meters (26Ãƒ ft) wide. His skin was thick, red-brown and fragmented into broad vertical plates.

Foliage

Flexible green-green leaf such as needle, in bundle two, and length 10-20 cm (3.9-7,9 inch) (very high up to 30 cm (12 inches) Young trees aged 5-10 years old contain leaf young, very different, single (unpaired), 2-4 cm (0.79 to 1.57 inches), grayish green, adult leaves appear to mix with teen leaves from the fourth or fifth year, replacing it completely around the year The juvenile leaves are also produced in regrowth after injury, such as broken buds, on older trees.

Cone

The cone is wide, oval, 8-15 cm long (3.1-5.9 inches) long, and takes 36 months to mature, longer than other pines. The seeds (pine nuts, piÃƒÆ' Ã‚ Â± that , pinhÃƒÆ'Ã‚Î¼es , pinoli , or pignons ) are large, 2 cm (0.79 inch) long, and pale brown with a powder-free black coat, and has an imperfect 4-8 millimeter (0.16-0.31 inches) wing that falls very easily. These wings are ineffective for the spread of the wind, and the seeds are dispersed in animals, originally mainly by the Iberian magpie, but in recent history largely by humans.

Stone pine trees in Piazza di Siena in the Villa Borghese gardens ...

src: c8.alamy.com

Use

Food

has been extensively cultivated for at least 6,000 years for edible pine nuts, which has been a commodity since early historical times. The tree has been cultivated throughout the Mediterranean for so long that it has been naturalized, and is often considered genuine beyond its natural range.

Ornamental tree

In Italy, stone pine has been an aesthetic landscape element since the period of the Italian Renaissance garden. The tree is one of the symbols of Rome, where many of Rome's historic streets, such as Via Appia, are adorned with stone pine streaks. Stone pines were planted on the hill of the Bosphorus strait in Istanbul for ornamental purposes during the Ottoman period. In the 1700s, Parma began to be introduced as an ornamental tree to other Mediterranean climatic regions of the world, and is now often found in gardens and parks in South Africa, California, and Australia. It has been naturalized outside the cities of South Africa to the extent that it is listed as an invasive species there. It is also grown in western Europe to southern Scotland, and on the East Coast of the United States to New Jersey.

In the United Kingdom has won the Royal Horticultural Society of Garden Merit Award.

Small specimens are used for bonsai, and are also grown in large pots and planters. Seeds that are one year old are available seasonally as Christmas trees at the top of the tree as high as 20-30 cm (7.9-11.8 inches).

Other products of economic value include resin, bark for tannin extraction, and pine cone cones empty for fuel. Pine pinea is also currently widely cultivated around the Mediterranean for environmental protection such as beach dune consolidation, soil conservation and protection of coastal agricultural crops.

View of green Italian Stone Pine Tree with beautiful blue ocean ...

src: st3.depositphotos.com

Pests

The introduced western conifer seeds (Leptoglossus occidentalis) were inadvertently imported with wood into northern Italy in the late 1990s from the western United States, and have spread throughout Europe as invasive pest species ever since. It feeds on the sap of a conifer cone that develops throughout its life, and its sap suckers cause the seed to develop into a withered and misplaced development. It has destroyed most of the pine nuts in Italy, threatening P. pinea in its native habitat there.