The roots of this pine have grown into Nero's palace.
Chir Pine
Pinus roxburghii
The chir pine belongs to the dry outer foothills of the Himalaya, the resin belt running from Pakistan through northern India into Nepal, where it is tapped for turpentine the way other trees are tapped for rubber. We map 5 of them, in 4 cities.
Its needles run up to thirty centimetres in bundles of three and hang rather than bristle, so a mature crown looks like a loose green waterfall rather than the stiff cone most people picture at the word pine. Every old one here is a long way from that range. Rome's monumental register lists exactly two, one of them on Colle Oppio, grown from a seed the Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci carried back from an expedition and planted directly above Nero's buried Domus Aurea. Caserta's, about 150 years old, grows in the English Garden of a Bourbon palace, and Hobart's in the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens' pinetum.
Rome
Rome's monumental register lists exactly two Himalayan pines in the whole city.
Hobart
Hobart's register calls this the Longleaved Indian Pine, and the name is the best short description of it.
Caserta
The chir pine is tapped for resin on Himalayan foothills from Pakistan to Nepal, and one of them grows in the garden of a Bourbon palace outside Naples.
Las Vegas
A Himalayan pine is the largest of its species in Nevada, and it happens to stand outside the geoscience building.
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