The plants around us. Volum II The plant around us. Volum II | Page 44

PINUS PINEA
English: Stone pine
Spanish: Pino piñonero
Estonian: Piinia (itaalia mänd)
The stone pine is a coniferous evergreen tree that can
English:
exceed 25 metres (82 ft) in height, but 12–20 metres (39–
66 ft) is more typical. In youth, it Spanish:
is a bushy Pino
globe,
in mid-
Piñonero
age an umbrella canopy on a thick trunk, and, in maturity, a
broad and flat crown over 8 metres
(26 ft) in
Estonian:
width. The bark is thick, red-brown and deeply fissured into
Portuguese:
broad vertical plates.
Albanian:
Turkish:
FLOWERS
CONE
It has flowers, grouped in
inflorescences called cones. There
are male and female cones. The
color of the cones is brown. Their
shape is oval-spherical. Female
cones are 10 and 15 cm in length;
they mature in the third year, giving
pine nuts covered with a hard bark,
1 cm long.
In Spain the pine cone
collection season is
established between
the months of November
and January.
LEAVES
The flexible mid-green leaves are
needle-like, in bundles of two, and
are 10–20 centimetres long
(exceptionally up to 30 centimetres.
Young trees up to 5–10 years old
bear juvenile leaves, which are very
different, single (not paired), 2–4
centimetres long, glaucous blue-
green; the adult leaves appear
mixed with juvenile leaves from the
fourth or fifth year on, replacing it
fully by around the tenth year.
Juvenile leaves are also produced
in regrowth following
injury, such as a broken
shoot, on older trees.
FRUIT
This pine is characterized by its
large globular pine cones, 8-15
cm long by 7-10 cm wide, which
appear sitting on the twigs. They
also harbor large pine nuts, that
are the seeds, up to 2 cm, in
which a membranous wing is not
visible, unlike other species.