Pinus halepensis

Mill. 1768

Common names

Aleppo pine (Silba 1986).

Taxonomic notes

Synonymy (Farjon 1998):

• P. alepensis Poir. in Lamarck 1804
• Pinus maritima Mill. 1768
• Pinus sylvestris L. var. maritima Aiton 1789
• Pinus maritima Aiton 1813 non Mill. 1768
• Pinus penicillus Lepeyr. 1813
• Pinus arabica Sieber ex Spreng. 1826
• Pinus genuensis S.E. Cook 1834
• Pinus halepensis Mill. var. genuensis (S.E. Cook) Antoine 1840
• Pinus hispanica J. Cook 1834
• Pinus halepensis Mill. var. minor Antoine 1840
• Pinus carica D. Don in Fellows 1841
• Pinus halepensis Mill. var. carica (D. Don) Carr. 1855
• Pinus abasica Carr. 1855
• Pinus halepensis Mill. var. abasica (Carr.) Carr. 1867
• Pinus loiseleuriana Carr. 1855
• Pinus pseudohalepensis Denhardt ex Carr. 1855
• Pinus parolinii Vis. 1856
• Pinus × saportae Rouy 1913
• Pinus ceciliae Llorens et L. Llorens 1984
• Pinus halepensis Mill. var. ceciliae (Llorens et L. Llorens) Rosello et al. 1992

Description

Range

Mediterreanean and W Asia (Silba 1986). Native to Croatia; among other places - I do not have a complete list. In South Africa, where it is cultivated for shelter poles and firewood, it has naturalized and invaded grassland and fynbos, particularly on dry soils, and become widespread in the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape (Palgrave 2002). It is also locally naturalized in USA: California (PLANTS database 2009.03.31).

Big tree

I have no data on wild trees. A specimen in Arderne Gardens, Claremont, Cape Town, South Africa was measured at 172 cm dbh and 32.0 m tall (Robert Van Pelt pers. comm., 2003.11.24).

Oldest

Dendrochronology

Pioneering work was carried out by Gindel (1944). Further work can be located at the Bibliography of Dendrochronology.

Ethnobotany

In the eastern Mediterranean, Pinus halepensis forests are important for resin, fuelwood and forest honey production and also for livestock grazing. "Resin collection activities in Mediterranean countries had always played a significant role in the welfare of forest communities, some of which lived marginally at the edge of subsistence. In some low-income areas, resin collection was (and continue to be) the only reliable source of labor. In addition, many of the resin producing forests are community forests and production benefits go to resin community co-operatives. Another important aspect of these forests is that multiple purpose forestry is applied and other activities other than resin collection co-exist, such as apiculture... Income from the wood of a Pinus halepensis tree, for example, is only 2% of the income generated from resin throughout the lifetime of the tree (an average size tree can produce 3 - 4 kilograms of resin per year). Moreover, it has been observed that forests that have active resin production have lower incidence of forest fires. This results from the fact that adjacent communities have an active interest in preserving the integrity of the forest ecosystems" (Moussouris and Regato 1999).

Observations

Remarks

Citations

Gindel, J. 1944. Aleppo pine as a medium for tree-ring analysis. Tree-Ring Bulletin 11(1):6-8. Available online at www.treeringsociety.org/TRBTRR/TRBvol11_1.pdf (accessed 2006.06.05).

See also