The Single-leaf Nut Pine of the Old Pinetum

In 2000 a storm heaved this pine's roots out of the ground. It did not go over. It came to rest on one of its lower branches, and the Botanic Garden says it has continued to thrive from there. The garden counts its single-leaf nut pine among the earliest tree plantings it has. At the start of the twentieth century it stood just under three metres. It was recorded recently at 11.8, enough to make it a champion tree, and the garden says it far exceeds many specimens growing in the wild. The wild is a long way off. Pinus monophylla comes from the semi-desert of Nevada and California, and it is the only pine with single needles. The garden puts its success in Cambridge down to the city's dry climate. It still produces large, viable seeds, the pinyon nuts that were a staple food for California's indigenous peoples before Columbus. Nobody has published a planting date, so its exact age is open. If you know when it went in, tell us. Its champion status rests on the garden's own account, as the measurements do. It grows in the Old Pinetum. A second single-leaf pine there, planted in 1965, has reached 6.3 metres, so the old tree is the taller by five and a half. The garden is ticketed, about fifteen minutes on foot from Cambridge station.