The Lacebark Pine of Mellon Park

Most pines wear dark, furrowed, forgettable bark. This one peels. A lacebark pine sheds its outer bark in irregular plates, the way a plane tree does, and leaves behind a patchwork of olive, grey-green and chalk white that grows paler with age until an old trunk is close to ivory. The bark is the entire reason anybody planted it, and the reason its English name says nothing about pines. Pittsburgh's Shade Tree Commission named it a Tree of a Kind in March 2023, one of the categories in the city's first Remarkable Trees list. That list came out of 44 nominations from residents, 15 of which met the criteria, and it is a deliberately different kind of honour from a champion title: nobody nominates a lacebark pine because it is large. Pinus bungeana is Chinese, often multi-stemmed, and slow, and it was recorded here for what it looks like rather than what it measures. It stands on the north side of Mellon Park, towards Penn Avenue, across Fifth Avenue from the champion bald cypress and the katsura that were listed alongside it in the same round. No age, height or girth has been published. What can be said is that this is one of the few trees in the park worth a February visit: the bark is the show, it runs all twelve months, and it has nothing competing with it in winter.