Common Names
Mountain pine, Spirke (2), Swiss mountain pine [English], pin à crochets [French].Taxonomic notes
Syn: P. uncinata Ramond ex De Candolle 1805; P. mugo var. rostrata (Antoine) Hoopes (1). It is often treated as a vicariant species separate from P. mugo (2, 3).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. (1; note foliage characters identical to subsp. mugo, the taxa being separable only on habit and cone characters).Range
Europe: 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 (1). USDA hardiness zone 5. The isolated central French population was introduced in the 19th century, and it has been widely planted through Mediterranean and northern Europe in reforestation programs (1, 3).Big Tree
Oldest
Dendrochronology
Ethnobotany
Observations
Remarks
The French name Pin à crochets ('pine with hooks') refers to the hooked apophyses of the cones.Locally naturalised in several areas of N Europe.
Citations
(1) K.I. Christensen 1987. Taxonomic revision of the Pinus mugo complex and P. × rhaetica (P. mugo × sylvestris) (Pinaceae). Nordic J. Botany 7: 383-408.(2) R. Businský 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].
(3) Barbéro et al., Chapter 8 in Richardson 1998.
This page prepared by M.P. Frankis, 28-Feb-1999.
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This page is from the Gymnosperm Database
URL: http://www.geocities.com/~earlecj/pi/pin/uncinata.htm
Edited by Christopher J. Earle
E-mail:earlecj@earthlink.com
Last modified on 28-Feb-1999