Pinus sibirica

Du Tour 1803

Common names

Сибирский кедр, Сосна сибирская [Russian]; Siberian cedar, Siberian stone pine.

Taxonomic notes

Type not designated. Synonymy:

• Pinus cembra L. var. sibirica (Du Tour) G. Don 1830;
• P. cembra subsp. sibirica (Du Tour) Krylov 1914;
• P. hingganensis H.J. Zhang 1985;
• P. sibirica (Du Tour) var. hingganensis (H.J. Zhang) Silba 1990.

P. pumila and P. sibirica naturally hybridize in the Lake Baikal region. Genetic studies in the area indicate that hybrids make both male and female contributions to the reproductive output of the population, and confirm the presence of both backcrosses and F2 hybrids (Politov et al. 1999, Petrova et al. 2008).

For discussion of systematics relative to other species in subsection Strobus, see Phylogeny of East Asian white pines.

Description

Trees to 35-40 m tall and 180 cm dbh, typically with numerous spreading branches forming a broadly conical crown. Bark first smooth and pale brown, with age turning gray and becoming scaly and deeply fissured. Twigs initially have a dense, pale yellow pubescence, later glabrous, smooth, yellowish brown or light brown. Buds ovoid-conical, without resin. Leaves arranged in dense tufts near the ends of branches, persisting 2-4 years, borne in fascicles of 5 with deciduous basal sheaths of thin, orange-brown scales that fall away in the second year, spreading wide or forward, straight or slightly curved, more or Iess rigid to flexible, triangular in cross-section, not twisted, 6-11(-13) cm × 1.2-1.7 mm, green; stomata in white lines on the two adaxial faces. Pollen cones clustered, spirally arranged, short cylindrical, reddish turning red-brown. Seed cones single or in whorls of 2-3 on very short peduncles, remaining closed or opening only slightly at maturity, glaucous green to purplish when growing, resinous, ovoid-conical, usually longer than wide but variable, (5-)7-10(-12) cm long, 4-6(-8) cm wide, dark brown when ripe. Seed scales imbricate, widely cuneate, with 2 deep adaxial seed cavities, soft woody; apophyses broadly rhombic or widely triangular to semi-orbicular, thickened, longitudinally striated, drying to dark brown; umbo terminal, obtuse, slightly upturned, lighter colored than the rest of the scale. Seeds oblong-obovoid, 10-14 × 5-7 mm, slightly ridged across one end, without a true wing (Farjon 2010).

The pumila/sibirica hybrids are uncommon even where they occur, comprising <1% of the population. They lack erect growth habit, but the violet color of developing cones is characteristic of P. sibirica (Politov et al. 1999, Petrova et al. 2008).

Distribution and Ecology

China: Heilongjiang, Nei Mongol, Xinjiang; Russia: the Urals and Siberia (excepting most of Yakutia and E coastal areas; disjunct population on the Kola Peninusula), Kazakhstan; N Mongolia. Climate continental, cold. Found along major rivers at elevations of 100-200 m and in mountains up to about 2400 m. In lowlands, occurs with Pinus sylvestris, Larix gmelinii, L. sibirica, and Betula pendula on sites with recurrent fire; on wet sites ("black taiga") is commonly found with Abies sibirica, Picea obovata, and Betula spp. Very extensive in the Siberian taiga with an estimated area of occupancy of 450,000 km². Accordingly, it is not a species of conservation concern (Farjon 2010).

The seeds of P. sibirica are primarily disseminated by the Eurasian nutcracker, Nucifraga caryocatactes (Farjon 2010).

Remarkable Specimens

The largest I have record of is a specimen 48 m tall and 350 cm in girth occurs on Kedrovy Pass in the Altai Mts. (Vladimir Dinets e-mail 1998.01.10).

The oldest known specimen, 1198 years, was documented in a tree-ring chronology covering the period 732 BCE to 2014 CE, collected in Mongolia by A. E. Hessl and colleagues (doi.org/10.25921/egd3-4q45). This was mostly a subfossil chronology. It also contained 6 other trees with a record over 1100 years, of which the most recent had an 1184-year record ending in 2003 and was presumably alive.

Ethnobotany

This is an economically important species for timber, resins, edible seeds, and horticulture:

• The timber, although considered inferior in quality to that of Pinus sylvestris and Picea obovata, has many uses, e.g. poles, light construction, carpentry, furniture, veneer, utensils, boxes, wood carving, and musical instruments (these are all typical uses for white pines around the world). The wood is soft, lightweight and rose-colored (Farjon 2010).
• Trees are tapped for resin, mainly to produce turpentine (Farjon 2010).
• The edible, nutritious seeds are locally harvested; e.g., in the Altai Mountains harvests may yield as much as 300 kg of seeds per hectare (Vladimir Dinets e-mail 1998.01.10, Farjon 2010). This link will take you to a 2021 video showing how cones are harvested and how the seeds are extracted.
• Locally, P. sibirica is a popular horticultural tree in large gardens and parks, and several cultivars including dwarf forms are known (Farjon 2010).

The tree is also closely tied to an emergent religion, spawned in the 1990 from the book series The Ringing Cedars of Russia, also called Anastasianism. Adherents, in addition to many other beliefs, attribute spiritual powers to the tree and healing powers to products made from it, particularly its essential oil.

This species has been used in dendroclimatic reconstruction, e.g., by D'Arrigo et al. (2001) and Hessl et al. (2018).

Observations

No data as of 2023.11.03.

Remarks

The epithet refers to the geographic range, Siberia.

This is another pine, like the piñon and P. albicaulis, that provides an important food source for local indigenous peoples and wildlife in the form of large, wingless seeds that are distributed primarily by birds--in this case, the Eurasian nutcracker Nucifraga cariocatactes (Vladimir Dinets e-mail 1998.01.10).

Citations

D'Arrigo, R., G. Jacoby, D. Frank, N. Pederson, B. Buckley, B. Nachin, R. Mijiddorj and C. Dugarjav. 2001. 1738 years of Mongolian temperature variability inferred from a tree-ring width chronology of Siberian pine. Geophysical Research Letters 28: 543-546.

Du Tour, M. 1803. Pinus sibirica sp. nov. in Déterville (publ.), Nouveau dictionaire d'histoire naturelle, ... V.18, p.18. Paris.

Farjon, Aljos. 2010. A Handbook of the World's Conifers. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers.

Hessl, Amy E., Kevin J. Anchukaitis, Casey Jelsema, Benjamin Cook, Oyunsanaa Byambasuren, Caroline Leland, Baatarbileg Nachin, Neil Pederson, Hanqin Tian and Laia Andreu Hayles. 2018. Past and future drought in Mongolia. Science Advances 4(3), e1701832. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1701832.

Petrova, E. A., S. N. Goroshkevich, M. M. Belokon, Y. S. Belokon, and D. V. Politov. 2008. Population genetic structure and mating system in the hybrid zone between Pinus sibirica Du Tour and P. pumila (Pall.) Regel at the eastern Baikal lake shore. Annals of Forest Research 51: 19-30.

Politov, Dmitri V., M. M. Belokon, Oleg P. Maluchenko, Yuri S. Belokon, Vladimir N. Molozhnikov, Leon E. Mejnartowicz, and Konstantin V. Krutovskii. 1999. Genetic evidence of natural hybridization between siberian stone pine, Pinus sibirica du Tour, and dwarf siberian pine, P. pumila (Pall.) Regel. Forest Genetics 6(1): 41–48.

See also

Multiple articles on the biological and cultural importance of this species, at the Siberian Cedar website of dendroecologist Sergei Nikolaevich Goroshkevich.

Richardson (1998).

Wu and Raven (1999).