Pinus heldreichii (pino loricato) description

Pinus heldreichii

H. Christ (1863)

Common names

Munika, cherna mura [=Black pine: Bulgarian, Serbian], whitebark pine, Heldreich pine, Bosnian pine [English], Panzerkiefer [German], pin d'ecorce blanche [French], il pino loricato [Italian] (Janković 1986), robolo [Greek]; var. leucodermis called palebark pine (Biondi 1992) or Bosnian pine (Farjon 1984).

Taxonomic notes

This is a member of Pinus subsection Pinaster, a mostly-Mediterranean group of 7 species. Two molecular analyses have found it sister to all other species in the subsection (Gernandt et al. 2005, Jin et al. 2021), the latter study indicating this has been a distinct lineage for 40 million years. Many authorities recognize a variety, P. heldreichii var. leucodermis (Antoine) Markgraf ex Fitschen. However, Farjon (2010) found all of its supposedly diagnostic character states to be overlapping with the type variety; moreover on the Balkan Peninsula both varieties grow in the same areas and have apparently the same ecology. It may be that the Italian trees will prove sufficiently distinct to warrant the name P. leucodermis; they have a clearly distinct suite of foliar terpenoids (Adams et al. 2020) and a disjunct range, but similar ecological associations and nearly indistinguishable morphology when compared to the Balkan Peninsula trees. Molecular studies are needed to clarify relations between these taxa.

Description

Trees to 35 m tall and 200 cm dbh, but often shrubby; habit pyramidal to oval. Bark first pale, green-gray, smooth; later becoming thick, ash-gray, flaking to leave yellow patches, breaking into plates. Branches whorled, upward-curving, esp. on young trees. Twigs twigs glaucous, darkening in later years. Leaves in fascicles of 2, 6-11 cm long, 1.5 mm thick, stiff, sharp, green, in whorls about twigs, retained 2-6 years. Buds brown, not resinous, 15 mm diameter. Pollen cones bright yellow, in dense clusters at the base of the shoot. Seed cones in clusters of 2-4 on short peduncles, 7-9 cm long and 2.5 cm wide with a flat base and thin, weak scales, opening when ripe. Umbo very short, often missing. Flowers from May to June, cones ripening in September and October of the second year. Seed 7 mm long, with a wing 25 mm long (Farjon 1984, Janković 1986, Rushforth 1987, Richardson and Rundel 1998). See García Esteban et al. (2004) for a detailed characterization of the wood anatomy.

Distribution and Ecology

Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. P. heldreichii usually grows iat 900-2500 m elevation, on soils derived from calcareous (limestone, dolomite) or occasionally ultramafic parent materials. Together with Pinus mugo and P. uncinata, P. heldreichii is one of the high-elevation pines of the Mediterreanean basin (Richardson and Rundel 1998, Barbero et al. 1998). Its ecological associations vary somewhat between Italy and the Balkan Peninsula. In the Balkan Peninsula P. heldreichii usually grows in mixed stands, reaching the alpine timberline amidst Pinus mugo (Farjon 1984, Richardson and Rundel 1998, Hristo Dimitrov Stankov e-mail 1999.06.30). Common associates include Pinus sylvestris, P. peuce and P. nigra (Hristo Dimitrov Stankov e-mail 1999.06.30). In Italy, it usually grows on dry, sunny sites where it forms mixed stands with Abies and Fagus (Farjon 1984, Richardson and Rundel 1998), pure stands occurring only on steep and dry rocky southern slopes (Janković 1986).

Hardy to Zone 5 (cold hardiness limit between -28.8°C and -23.3°C) (Bannister and Neuner 2001).

Remarkable Specimens

I have seen a photograph (University of Aberdeen 1999) of a huge tree on Mt. Pindos in Greece that probably measures at least 220 cm dbh. A tree in the Pirin National Park, called Baikusheva mura or Baikushev's pine (photo) is 24 m tall and 222 cm diameter. This tree is popularly described as 1300 years old, but I have seen no data supporting that age estimate, and the tree does not look particularly old. An age of 1300 years would, perhaps not coincidentally, make the tree exactly as old as the nation of Bulgaria. Photos posted on Facebook by Luigi Ceci (2019.04.30, Big Tree Seekers group) show a very large tree that he reports "On the 'Pollinello', at 1,900 meters above sea level, in the territory of Castrovillari (Cs), a large pine tree of 12 m in height and 6.04 m circumference resists." This corresponds to a DBH of 192 cm.

The oldest known specimen is a tree that has been named Italus, growing in Pollino National Park in southern Italy (Piovesan et al. 2018). This has been described as the "oldest dated tree of Europe." The authors use a combination of evidence from tree-ring cores and sampling of old root wood to demonstrate that this tree was, when sampled in 2017, at least 1229 years old; their method of using root wood to extend the age estimate is the most scientifically innovative aspect of their work. The authors speculate (and I don't disagree) that this species should be able to survive to ages of as much as 1,300 years, and this accounts for the accounts of a "1300-year-old pine" that subsequently appeared in popular media such as newspapers and Wikipedia. Many of the same researchers have a long history of study of this species; as early as 1989, a specimen of var. leucodermis aged 963 years (in 1989) was collected on Mt. Pollino (approx. 39°50' N, 16°15' E). The specimen was cored ca. 1 m above ground level; most of the record was verified by crossdating (Biondi 1992).

Ethnobotany

P. heldreichii is a popular ornamental, with several cultivars in use (Rushforth 1987).

This species has been used in many dendrochronological studies, including ecological studies, climate studies, and archeology (e.g. Seim et al. 2012, Bojaxhi and Toromani 2016, Christopoulou et al. 2022).

Observations

The Valia-Calda unit of Pindos National Park, in Greece, sounds like a good place to see it; here it grows to the summit of Mt. Pindos, 2177 m. In Bulgaria it is native in Mount Pirin, where the entire population is protected within Pirin National Park; in this area it grows in forests with Pinus peuce. Pirin National Park is a remarkable place in general; with nine conifer species, it may host the greatest conifer diversity to be found anywhere in Europe. Farther south P. heldreichii grows on Mount Slavyanka, and is protected there in a Natural Reserve (Hristo Dimitrov Stankov e-mail 1999.06.30). In Italy, it is best seen at the Pollino National Park, which has adopted this pine as its symbol.

Remarks

Named for its collector, von Heldreich, who found it in the mountains of northern Greece on July 31, 1851 (Christ 1863).

Citations

Adams, Robert P., Alexander N. Tashev, and Nikolay Tashev. 2020. The leaf volatile terpenoids of Pinus heldreichii Christ from Bulgaria and comparisons with Greece and Montenegro-Serbia oils, and P. leucodermis oil, Italy. Phytologia 102(3):124-130.

Anonymous. 1999. Parco Nazionale del Pollino. http://www.telsa.it/castrovillari/proloco/parco/parco.htm, accessed 1999.02.23, now defunct.

Barbero et al., 'Pines of the Medierreanean Basin', p.153-171 in Richardson 1998.

Biondi, Franco. 1992. Development of a tree-ring network for the Italian peninsula. Tree-Ring Bulletin 52: 15-29.

Bojaxhi, Faruk, and Elvin Toromani. 2016. The growth of Bosnian pine (Pinus heldreichii Christ.) at tree-line locations from Kosovo and its response to climate. South-East European Forestry: SEEFOR 7(2): 109–118. doi.org/10.15177/seefor.16-10.

Christ, H. 1863. Uebersicht der Europaischen Abietineen (Pinus, Linn.). Verhandlungen der Naturforschende Gesellschaft in Basel (n. s.) 3:540-557 (p. 549). Available: www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/100853, accessed 2011.05.20.

Christopoulou, Anastasia, Barbara Gmińska-Nowak, Eleftheria Tsakanika, and Tomasz Ważny. 2022. Discovering the unknown history of the utilization of Pinus heldreichii in wooden structures by means of dendroarchaeology: a case study from Metsovo (Northern Greece). Forests 13(5):719. doi.org/10.3390/f13050719.

Gernandt, David S., G. Geada López, S. O. Garcia and Aaron Liston. 2005. Phylogeny and classification of Pinus. Taxon 54(1):29-42.

Hayter, Jane. 1994. Northern Greece. International Dendrological Society Yearbook, pp.104-124.

Janković, M. 1986. "Pinus heldreichii," in Flora Srbije. Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Jin, Wei-Tao, David S. Gernandt, Christian Wehenkel, Xiao-Mei Xia, Xiao-Xin Wei, and Xiao-Quan Wang. 2021. Phylogenomic and ecological analyses reveal the spatiotemporal evolution of global pines. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118(20): e2022302118. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2022302118.

Kubler, Hans. 1991. Function of spiral grain in trees. Trees 5: 125-135.

Pino 1999 = Pino elicoidale (a Pollinello). http://194.243.119.70/pollino/pinoeli/pinoeli.htm, accessed 1999.02.23, now defunct.

Pino2 1999= Il Pino loricato. http://entoma.unibas.it/pinoloricato.htm, accessed 1999.02.23, now defunct.

Piovesan, G., F. Biondi, M. Baliva, E. Presutti Saba, L. Calcagnile, G. Quarta, M. D’Elia, G. De Vivo, A. Schettino, and A. Di Filippo. 2018. The oldest dated tree of Europe lives in the wild Pollino massif: Italus, a strip-bark Heldreich’s pine. Ecology 99(7):1682–1684.

Seim, A., U. Büntgen, P. Fonti, H. Haska, F. Herzig, W. Tegel, V. Trouet, and K. Treydte. 2012. Climate sensitivity of a millennium-long pine chronology from Albania. Climate Research 51(3):217–228. doi.org/10.3354/cr01076.

University of Aberdeen. 1999. Untitled anonymous web site at http://www.abdn.ac.uk/~for284/pics/pic10.htm, accessed 1999.02.23, now defunct, however the information (and much more about P. heldreichii is now available at www.robolo.org, accessed 2021.05.13).

World Conservation Monitoring Centre - Trees [WCMC]. 1998. Database at http://www.wcmc.org.uk/cgi-bin/SaCGI.cgi/trees.exe, accessed 1998.10.01, now defunct.

Thanks to Milan Jovanovic for information and assistance contributed 1999.02.