The Henslow Black Pines

Darwin's teacher planted these pines so that they would look wrong. John Stevens Henslow, the botanist who mentored Charles Darwin at Cambridge, set out the Botanic Garden's Main Walk with black pines facing each other in pairs, exactly where a visitor expects symmetry, and then chose trees that refuse to match. The starkest pair stands directly opposite one another. On one side is the Austrian form, with slender, unbranched limbs sloping downward and short, stiff needles. On the other is the Spanish form, its immense branches spreading upward into an open crown of long needles. Same species, different countries, and the difference is the lesson. Crimean and Corsican black pines stand nearby to make the point twice more. The garden says its large black pines date from the earliest plantings of the 1840s, soon after it was established in 1846, which puts the pair at roughly 180 years. It gives no planting date for either tree on its own, and no girth or height has been published. They are still part of the garden's life rather than its archive. On 7 May 2023, during the Coronation concert, one of the black pines was lit up by people pedalling bicycles to make the power. The garden is ticketed and about fifteen minutes on foot from Cambridge station.