The Trees of Great Britain & Ireland/Volume 2/Herzegovinian Pine

by Henry John Elwes and Augustine Henry

 

PINUS LEUCODERMIS, Herzegovinian Pine

 

Pinus leucodermis, Antoine, Oestr. Bot. Zeitung. xiv. 366 (1864); Beck v. Mannagetta, Weiner Illust. Gartenzeit, 1889, p. 136, and Veg. Illyrischen Länder, 353 (1901); Ascherson u. Graebner, Syn. Mitteleurop. Flora, i. 212 (1897).

Pinus Laricio, Poiret, var. leucodermis, Christ, Flora, l. 81 (1867); Masters, Journ. Linn. Soc. (Bot) xxxv. 626 (1904).

 

An alpine tree attaining rarely 90 feet in height and 6 feet in girth. Bark ashy grey, fissuring into irregular plates, averaging 6 inches in length and 3 inches in breadth. Buds like those of P. Laricio, but darker brown in colour. Young branchlets glaucous. Leaves in pairs, persisting five or six years, densely covering the branchlets, except at the base of each year's shoot, which is bare for a short distance, forming an apical cup-like tuft, and on the rest of the branchlet directed forwards and slightly outwards; the two leaves in each bundle only slightly divergent; dark green, stiff, short, 2 to 3 inches in length, ending in a sharp cartilaginous point; basal-sheaths as in P. Laricio. According to Koehne,^[1] the structure of the leaf differs from P. Laricio in the resin-canals not being surrounded by stereome cells; and Masters states that the hypoderm projects in wedge-shaped masses into the substance of the leaf, which is not the case generally in forms of Laricio.

Cones short-stalked, ovoid-conic, with a flat base, about 3 inches long, resembling generally those of Laricio, but differing in the uniform dull brown colour of the whole cone, the umbo being of the same colour as the rest of the apophysis. The lower scales of the cone have very prominent pyramidal apophyses, and the umbo has a well-marked short spine directed backwards. Concealed part of the scales light brown on both surfaces. Seeds as in P. Laricio. (A.H.)

Pinus leucodermis was discovered in 1864 by Maly, who introduced it into cultivation the same year in the Belvidere, Vienna. The best account of the tree is given by Beck, who considers it to be specifically distinct from Laricio, and names it the Panzerfohre or Smré of the Herzegovinians. It is found in four distinct areas in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Montenegro; and as the most southerly of these is on the Montenegro-Albanian frontier (lat. 42° 25'), it is probable that it also grows on the Peristeri^[2] mountain, which lies west of Monastir in Albania. The most northerly locality (lat. 43° 40'), where it was discovered by Beck, is the Prenj Planina in the heart of Herzegovina. Here it occupies an area of about sixty kilometres in diameter, surrounding the western part of the Bjelasnica mountain, and forms a coniferous belt at from 4600 to 5500 feet elevation, rising solitary or in small groups to 5800 feet. Another area is the Bjela Gora, where the political boundaries of Bosnia, Montenegro, and Herzegovina unite around Mount Orjen. Reiser found it also in the Sinjavina Planina in Montenegro. Its occurrence in Servia is not yet established.

 

 

Plate 119: Pinus leucodermis in Bosnia

Plate 119.

PINUS LEUCODERMIS IN BOSNIA

 

It seems to resemble P. Cembra in its way of growth, and is confined to mountains of Triassic and limestone formation, where it forms a zone of scattered forest just below the limit of trees, usually not more than 1000 feet in depth, and finds its lowest level at 1000 metres on the Preslica planina, according to Reiser, near the railway station of Bradina; ascending on the Prenj and Orjen mountains to 1700 or 1800 metres. At the lowest elevation it is mixed with beech; at the highest with P. montana, Juniperus nana, and J. sabina.

In some places at the upper levels, where the snow lies very deep, it becomes very stunted, not rising more than 2 to 4 metres from the ground, but does not assume the procumbent habit of P. montana. It roots itself so firmly on the dry bare rocks of these mountains that no wind can hurt it, and it endures the burning sun and bitter winds of this region without injury. I am indebted to Herr Reiser of Serajevo for the photographs showing the habit of this tree (Plate 119).

In the upper Idbar valley there is a forest where P. leucodermis grows mixed with spruce, silver fir, Austrian pine, and yew, as well as with beech, ash, sycamore, Pyrus torminalis, and Acer obtusatum. ts smooth grey bark,^[3] divided into irregular segments, makes it very easy to distinguish from the Austrian pine, but Beck does not think the name of whitebark pine so applicable as that of Panzerföhre or armoured pine. The tree attains under favourable circumstances a height of 90 feet, with a diameter of 6 feet at the age of 294 years.

Of its timber Beck says nothing, but a story which was current in Bosnia when I was there in 1899, and which doubtless has some foundation, leads one to suppose that it is very hard. A Bosnian Turk was said to have bought a lot of trees of this species, which he felled and floated down the Narenta, and sold the timber as that of larch.

With regard to the occurrence of this species elsewhere, Christ described as a new species, Pinus Heldreichii,^[4] specimens which were collected on Mount Olympus in Thessaly. Afterwards, in a letter to Dr. Masters, he stated that this is only a remarkable alpine variety of Pinus Laricio, very reduced, and approaching in some respects Pinus montana. Halacsy^[5] considers that this tree, which grows on Mount Olympus in company with the ordinary form of Laricio and with Abies Apollonis, is identical with Pinus leucodermis.

A tree referred to this species has been recently found in southern Italy by Dr. Biagio Longo. He mentions^[6] two localities, the alpine zone of the Calabrian Apennines from Orsomarso to Mount Montea, and the mountain of La Spina in the province of Basilicata, where it grows in the zone of the beech, and rivals that tree in thickness of trunk; but the foresters in the Sila mountains do not recognise this as a distinct species, or did not know of its discovery when I was there in 1903.

Seeds were sent by Beck to Kew in October 1890; and five plants were raised, which have grown with remarkable slowness, being only 9 to 12 inches high in 1901. One of these trees, planted out in a bed near the pagoda, is barely 3 feet high at present. Another which was sent to Colesborne was planted in a high exposed situation in my park, where it grows very vigorously on oolite soil.

When in Bosnia, on my way to collect seeds, I was obliged to return home suddenly, but my companion, Mrs. Nicholl, who visited the Prenj mountain, procured a quantity of seeds which I sowed in 1902, and which have grown as fast as either the Corsican or Austrian pines, and look more healthy and vigorous on my soil than any other pine I have raised. They form a much better root-system when young than either the Austrian or Corsican pine, and in consequence are much more easy to transplant. I moved a number in September last just before a period of drought, and they have passed through a severe winter with very few deaths; I therefore believe that the tree will be a good one for planting in dry limestone soils, and may have a greater ornamental if not economic value than the Austrian pine. (H.J.E.)

 

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1. Deutsche Dendrologie, 37 (1893).
2. This must not be confused with another mountain of the same name, east of Janina in the Pindus range.
3. The bark is figured in Hempel u. Wilhelm, Baüme u. Sträucher, i. 161, fig. 84 (1889).
4. Christ, in Verh. Naturf. Ges. Basel, iii. 549 (1863), but later, in Flora, l. 83 (1867), he states that Pinus Heldreichii is identical with P. leucodermis, which he considers to be only an alpine variety of P. Laricio.
5. Consp. Fl. Græcæ, iii. 453 (1904).
6. Annali di Botanica, iii. 13, 17 (1905), iv. 55 (1906).