Re: Monterey Pine

When I arrived in California at the home I still live in it was newly constructed and had adobe dirt for a lawn.

As a fugitive from North Dakota, I had to plant a palm, a Washingtonia robusta.

Then as a tribute I had to plant a pine tree, yes, a Monterey Pine.

Twenty five years later this beautiful tree began looking very peaked.

A professor friend visited as he went by, looked at the tree, and as an entomologist, he said it had pine pitch canker or bark beetle. Perhaps it is the bark beetle that spreads the canker. I just don't know.

But it was said to be fatal.

So I hired a professional to remove it before it would infect the many others in the development.

He told me he had a way to cure it but the law would not allow him to use it so he cut it down, stump ground it and hauled it away.

I had a great deal of trouble getting anything else to grow there. I tried several trees but nothing seemed to "take".

Now, finally, I have an Australian "Brachychiton bidwilldii" that has finally decided to grow. After about three or four years of producing leaves and staying at about two feet, Last spring it threw its leaves and proceeded to show its interesting spurt of flowers, followed by a new set of leaves. It also started to grow and is now about four feet high!

If this tree might interest you, see: 
http://www.charlies-web.com/brachychiton_bidwillii/brachychiton.html
---Chas---
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Alison:
 
Monterey Pine would do okay for you in western Sicily.  There are already plenty of them planted there.  Acid soil or not is not a factor.
 
It would prefer the coast, as the farther it gets from the coast and the more heat it must endure, the less happy it will be.
 
We have them planted throughout California, from the cool Northern Coast to the hot interiors of the southlands.  It becomes stressed in the hotter climes and struggles with bark beetles, borers, tip moths, and various diseases.  We're losing almost all of all Monterey pines currently to Pine Pitch Canker, an incurable disease that has claimed the older interior trees as well as trees where I live (Central Coast).
 
By the way, my cousin Agostino lives between Palermo and Terrasini.  Where is your garden?
 
Joe
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