Pinus pinaster

Aiton 1789

Common names

Maritime pine, cluster pine [English]; pinheiro bravo [Portuguese]; pi marítim, pi pinastre [Catalan]; pino marítimo, pino resinero, pino rodeno [Spanish].

Taxonomic notes

The type species of Pinus subgen. Pinus sect. Pinea subsect. Pinaster Loudon. Syn: P. maritima Lamarck 1778 (non Miller 1768), P. glomerata Salisbury 1796, P. laricio Savi 1798, P. escarena Risso 1826, P. hamiltonii Tenore 1845, P. mesogeensis Fieschi & Gaussen 1932 (Farjon 1998).

The species is sometimes split into two or three subspecies (Farjon 1998), but the differences are small (minor details of leaf anatomy) and poorly researched. Since the origin of the cultivated plant first described described by Aiton is unknown, the type name pinaster cannot confidently be assigned to any subspecies (Greuter et al. 1984, Gaussen et al. 1993). Until a full study of the species is done, including historical research into the material available to Aiton and typification of the species name, it is best treated as monotypic (Price et al. 1998). The relevant names are:

Pinus pinaster subsp. atlantica Villar. Atlantic coasts of SW Europe. Considered the type by Grueter et al. (1984) and Farjon (1998).

Pinus pinaster subsp. escarena (Risso) K. Richter [syn. subsp. hamiltonii (Tenore) Villar]. Mediterranean coasts of SW Europe. Considered the type by Gaussen et al. (1993).

Pinus pinaster subsp. renoui (Villar) Maire [syn. var. maghrebiana Villar]. Atlas Mts of NW Africa.

Description

Tree to 30(-40) m, with a commonly somewhat sinuous stem (straight in some areas, notably Corsica and NW Africa) and a usually open crown of regular, candelabra-like upswept branches, broad ovoid-conic when young, becoming irregular and denser with age. The bark is very thick, scaly or plated, fissured, patterned red-brown, blackish and buff. Branching is mostly uninodal, but occasionally multinodal on vigorous young trees. Shoots are stout, 7-15 mm thick, buff to yellow-brown, rough. Foliage buds are large, cylindric to ovoid-acute, with red-brown scales having long free tips, revolute, fringed with white hairs. Adult leaves, retained 1.5-3 years, are 12-25 cm long in fascicles of two (with some fascicles of 3), with a persistent 2 cm sheath. They are green to yellow-green, sometimes tinged glaucous, spreading, very stout, about 2-2.2 mm thick, with serrulate margins, and fine lines of stomata on all faces. Juvenile leaves are strongly glaucous, 3-6 cm long, on slender (3 mm) shoots, and are grown for the first 2-5 years of life. Cones are slightly deflexed on short stout stalks, symmetrical, hard, heavy, ovoid-conic, (7-) 9-18 (-20) cm long, 4-6 cm broad when closed, ripening rich glossy chestnut-brown in April two years after pollination, and opening the same summer or up to 10 years later, to 7-11 cm broad. The scales are stout, thick, woody, and stiff; the apophysis is 10-16 × 18-26 mm wide, rhomboid, with a strong raised transverse ridge; the umbo is dorsal, blackish grey, stout, 4-7 mm wide and 3 mm high. The seeds are shiny blackish brown above, matt grey below, 7-11 × 5 mm with an 18-25 × 10 mm wing, buff with numerous straight dark brown streaks, the wing easily removed from the seed (Frankis, M.P., pers. comm. 1999.02.10).

Distribution and Ecology

Algeria, France (S of the Gironde and along the French Mediterranean coast; Corsica), Gibraltar, Italy (Sardinia; Sicily; the W coast), Malta, Monaco, Morocco, Portugal, Spain (Alicante. Balearic Islands. Barcelona. Castellón. Gerona. Lérida. Tarragona. Valencia), and Tunisia. In Europe at 0-400 m; to 900 m in Corsica and to 2000 m in Morocco (Frankis, M.P., pers. comm. 1999.02.10).

Bannister and Neuner (2001) describe it as hardy to Zone 8 (cold hardiness limit between -12.1°C and -6.7°C). However, a common-garden experiment by Prada et al. (2017) found high intraspecific variation in cold-hardiness and other intraspecific traits: "Two continental Iberian populations showed high cold tolerance and slower growth... The coastal populations displayed the opposite behavior, while the continental Moroccan population presented a unique combination of traits. We confirmed trade-offs between cold-hardiness and growth at the population level, but not within populations."

Remarkable Specimens

The largest recorded specimen appears to have been 4.78 m in girth (152 cm dbh) when last measured in 2013; it grows near Talayuela, Spain. The tallest is stated to be 38.1 m tall (Landes, France), measured 2021 (Dominique Beziat email 2021.02.09). There is a 2017 record of a 39.2 m tall tree near Braga, Portugal (Dominique Beziat email 2020.11.29). The tallest ever recorded, according to a chief technician of the Forests National Office (France), was a 42 m tall tree in the forest of the Landes (S.W. of France) that fell during a storm in December, 1999 (Dominique Beziat email, 2020.11.28).

The oldest known living specimen, 165 years, was documented in a tree-ring chronology covering the period 1821-1985 (crossdated after 1836), collected in east-central Spain by Klaus Richter (doi.org/10.25921/4y97-4x15). The next-oldest tree, 162 years, was documented in a tree-ring chronology covering the period 1843-2004 (crossdated after 1866), collected in northern Morocco by Ramzi Touchan (doi.org/10.25921/j049-eh91). This site was used in a dendroclimatic drought reconstruction (Touchan et al. 2011). Only three chronologies have been developed for this species; considerably older trees may exist.

Ethnobotany

The largest man-made forest in the world, the 900,000 ha Les Landes on the Atlantic coast of SW France, is planted almost entirely with this species. This was originally planted (from 1789 onward) not for timber, but for land reclamation, with a huge area of shifting sand dunes threatening fertile farmland futher inland (Frankis, M.P., pers. comm. 1999.02.10).

The species has been widely planted in other parts of the world with a Mediterranean climate, and is now naturalised in South Africa and elsewhere (Price et al. 1998); in recent years planting outside of Europe has declined considerably as P. radiata provides larger crops of better quality timber in the same conditions. P. radiata does not however provide the quantites of resin and turpentine, and P. pinaster is still the most important pine in Europe for resin production (Frankis, M.P., pers. comm. 1999.02.10).

The cones are widely sold for Christmas decorations.

The species has been used in a variety of dendrochronology studies, starting in 1982. Some of these studies have looked at the species' utility in reconstructing past climate variation, and most of the others have looked at ecological problems such as stand development, productivity, and the impact of insect defoliators.

Observations

No data as of 2023.11.03.

Remarks

The epithet is from the Italian "pinastro", a common name for the tree.

Citations

Aiton, W. 1789. Hortus Kewensis vol. 3, p. 367. Available: www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/23434, accessed 2011.05.21.

Gaussen, H., V.H. Heywood, and A.O. Chater. Pinus. In: T.G. Tutin et al. 1993 Flora Europaea 2nd edition, Vol. 1. Cambridge.

Greuter, W., H.M. Burdet, and G. Long. 1984. Med.Checklist - A critical inventory of vascular plants of the circum-mediterranean countries, Vol. 1. Geneva.

Prada, Eva, José Climent, Ricardo Alía, and Raquel Díaz. 2016. Life-history correlations with seasonal cold hardiness in maritime pine. American Journal of Botany 103(12):2126-2135.

Touchan, Ramzi, Kevin J. Anchukaitis, David M. Meko, Said Attalah, Christopher Baisan, Ali Aloui. 2011. Spatiotemporal drought variability in northwestern Africa over the last nine centuries. Climate Dynamics 37(1):237-252. doi: 10.1007/s00382-010-0804-4

See also

Elwes and Henry 1906-1913 at the Biodiversity Heritage Library. This series of volumes, privately printed, provides some of the most engaging descriptions of conifers ever published. Although they only treat species cultivated in the U.K. and Ireland, and the taxonomy is a bit dated, still these accounts are thorough, treating such topics as species description, range, varieties, exceptionally old or tall specimens, remarkable trees, and cultivation. Despite being over a century old, they are generally accurate, and are illustrated with some remarkable photographs and lithographs.

The species account at Threatened Conifers of the World.