The Jaedong Lacebark Pine

This pine is not native to Korea. It is Pinus bungeana, a lacebark pine from China, and the story goes that a Ming dynasty envoy brought it here as a gift some six centuries ago, though nobody can prove that part and it may well be a flattering exaggeration attached after the fact. What is certain is the tree itself: bark that flakes away in pale patches until entire sections of trunk look bone white, which is why Koreans call it baeksong, white pine. A single trunk splits near the ground into what looks like two separate pines standing side by side, an accident of growth that makes it read as a pair rather than one seventeen metre specimen. Political legend has attached itself here too. The 19th century regent Heungseon Daewongun is said to have plotted the downfall of the powerful Andong Kim clan from a pavilion that once stood beside this very tree, watching it as he worked out how to break their grip on the throne. The pine has outlasted the girls' high school that used to occupy this land and now stands on the grounds of South Korea's Constitutional Court, a small irony given its own role, real or invented, in a much older struggle for power.