Pinus uncinata

Ramond ex De Candolle 1805

Common names

Mountain pine, Spirke (Businský 1998), Swiss mountain pine [English], pin à crochets [French], pino negro [Spanish].

Taxonomic notes

Syn: P. mugo subsp. uncinata (Ramond) Domin 1935; P. mugo var. rostrata (Antoine) Hoopes (Christensen 1987). See detailed discussion on the P. mugo page. P. mugo and P. uncinata commonly hybridize to form the nothospecies Pinus × rotundata Link.

Description

A tree to 12-20 m tall and 0.5-1 m dbh, with a straight, erect trunk and an ovoid-conic crown. Bark ash-gray-brown to blackish-grey, splitting in angular scaly plates, thick at base of trunk. Shoots uninodal, glabrous, greyish-black to deep red-brown grooved between the decurrent scale-leaves. Buds ovoid-conic, 6-9 mm, red-brown, very resinous. Leaves in fascicles of two (rarely three around apical bud of strong shoots), bright to dark green, often with a greyish tinge, straight to slightly twisted, minutely serrulate, 23-75 mm long, 0.9-2.1 mm wide, leaf sheath persistent, grey, 15-18 mm. Leaves persistent (2-)4-9(-10) years. Plants usually monoecious, rarely subdioecious. Male cones 10 mm, yellow or red, pollen shed May to July. Female cones purple ripening shiny dark brown in late September to October 15-17 months later and opening then or the following spring; sessile or nearly so, strongly asymmetrical, 25-60 mm long, 20-40 mm wide (closed), opening to x 30-50 mm, deflexed down stem with angle of inclination to stem 110°-160°; apophyses thick, strongly pyramidal on outer side of cone, still thickened and pyramidal on inner side but not strongly so, stiff, inflexible, 6-10 mm wide, outer scale apophyses 4-9 mm thick, inner apophyses 3-4 mm thick; umbo at apex of apophyses, 3-4 mm wide, often with a pronounced 1 mm prickle. Seed black, 3-4 mm with a 7-12 mm wing buff with darker streaks; cotyledons (3-)5-7(-8). Cones shed soon after seed release or up to a year or two later. (Christensen 1987; note foliage characters identical to P. mugo, the taxa being separable only on habit and cone characters). See García Esteban et al. (2004) for a detailed characterization of the wood anatomy.

Distribution and Ecology

Europe: Andorra, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland. Numerous reports of P. uncinata from within the larger range of P. mugo should probably be assigned to that taxon. Mainly found in the Sierra de Gúdar, Sierra Cebollera, Pyrenees, Massif Central, and the western Alps, overlapping widely with subsp. mugo in E Switzerland and W Austria, with outliers as far northeast as the Böhmerwald and the Erzgebirge (E Germany), but absent from SE Europe. A high altitude species, occurring mostly at 1000-2300 m, occasionally as low as 200 m in frost hollows and peat bog habitats in the NE of its range in E Germany (Christensen 1987). USDA hardiness zone 5.

Distributions of P. mugo, P. uncinata and their nothospecies P. × rotundata. P. mugo are classified as "P. mugo s.s." which are specimens synonymous with P. mugo subsp. mugo; and "P. mugo s.l." which are specimens that could be assignable to either P. mugo subsp. mugo or P. mugo subsp. uncinata. Due to the large number of records (over 50,000) data have been subsampled to 0.1 degree spatial resolution. Source, GBIF.org (2021.11.12) GBIF occurrence download https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.348a34.

There are also a substantial number of disjunct naturalized populations occurring in Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Spain, and Sweden (map in Farjon 2017). The isolated central French population was introduced in the 19th century. The species has also been widely planted through Mediterranean and northern Europe in reforestation programs (Christensen 1987, Barbéro et al. 1998).

Remarkable Specimens

Monumental Trees (accessed 2021.11.12) records a specimen of 3.43 m girth (109 cm dbh) at the Patterdale parish churchyard in Patterdale, U.K.

Ethnobotany

Exploratory work in dendrochronology was done by Genova (1986).

Observations

Remarks

The French name Pin à crochets ('pine with hooks') refers to the hooked apophyses of the cones; this is also the origin of the epithet uncinata, meaning "barbed".

Locally naturalised in several areas of N Europe.

Citations

Barbéro et al., Chapter 8 in Richardson 1998.

Businský, R. 1998. Pinus mugo agg. in former Czechoslovakia - taxonomy, distribution, hybrid populations and endangering. Zprávy Ces. Bot. Spolec. Praha 33: 29-52. [in Czech; English summary].

Christensen, K.I. 1987. Taxonomic revision of the Pinus mugo complex and P. × rhaetica (P. mugo × sylvestris) (Pinaceae). Nordic J. Botany 7: 383-408.

Genova, R. 1986. Dendroclimatology of mountain pine (Pinus uncinata Ram.) in the central plain of Spain. Tree-Ring Bulletin 46:3-12.

This page prepared with the assistance of M.P. Frankis, 1999.02.28.

See also