The stone pine, botanical name Pinus pinea, also known as the Italian stone pine, Mediterranean stone pine, umbrella pine and parasol pine, is a tree from the pine family (Pinaceae). The tree is native 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 pine nuts since prehistoric times. They are widespread in horticultural cultivation as ornamental trees, planted in gardens and parks around the world. This plant has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Pinus pinea is a diagnostic species of the vegetation class Pinetea halepensis.
Distribution
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 ecoregions and countries, including the following:
Southern Europe
The Iberian conifer forests ecoregion of the Iberian Peninsula in Spain and Portugal; the Italian sclerophyllous and semideciduous 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 and Adriatic Seas in Croatia and Albania; the Crimean Submediterranean forest complex ecoregion on the Crimea Peninsula in Ukraine and Krasnodar Krai in Russia; 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, an extensive stone pine forest exists in western Peloponnese at Strofylia on the peninsula separating the Kalogria Lagoon from the Mediterranean Sea. This coastal forest is at least long, with dense and tall stands of Pinus pinea mixed with Pinus halepensis. Currently, Pinus halepensis is outcompeting stone pines in many locations of the forest. Another location in Greece is at Koukounaries on the northern Aegean island of Skiathos at the southwest corner of the island. This is a half-mile-long dense stand of stone and Aleppo pines that lies between a lagoon and the Aegean Sea.
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 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.
Description
The stone pine is a coniferous 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 (pine nuts, 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.