A Swiss stone pine belongs at two thousand metres, on the Alpine treeline, in the last thin band of soil before the rock wins.
Swiss Pine
Pinus cembra
Pinus cembra belongs at the Alpine and Carpathian treeline, in the last thin soil before rock takes over, which makes every specimen at street level or in a city park a transplant rather than a native. We map 3 of them, in 3 cities.
The oldest by story is Re Leone in Trentino's Passo Manghen, a cirmolo a forestry worker was sent to fell in the 1970s and refused, telling his supervisor it was a monument rather than timber. Berlin's grows on flat Dahlem sand, part of a 1903 teaching-garden planting nowhere near the two thousand metres of altitude this species normally needs. Vilnius keeps one three kilometres from its centre in the Antakalnis district, carrying the same edible seeds and dense, long needles as its wild Alpine cousins. Three cities so far.
Berlin
Vilnius
Swiss pine belongs to the Alps and the Carpathians, a high-altitude species that grows where most trees give up.
Photo: Vilensija (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Passo Manghen
A forestry worker was sent up this slope in the 1970s with instructions to fell it, and Leone Vaia refused.
Photo: Maurizio Ceol (CC BY 3.0)
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