This is a public-interest archive. Personal data is pseudonymized and retained under GDPR Article 89.

Re: Pinus bungeana

A Pinus bungeana I planted about 25 years ago in full sun is about 16 or 
more feet tall, with a circumference of a little more than ten 
inches.  It has a single trunk, is growing in ordinary soil, and has 
required no special care here in zone 7a in Beltsville, Maryland.

I consider the widely-applied name, Lacebark Pine, to be something of a 
misnomer.  To me, the word `lace' implies something close to fine 
netting, whereas the bungeana bark exfoliates in platelets varying in 
size from an inch or so to several inches in diamater.  I have never seen 
footlong strips such as those that exfoliate from sycamore trunks, and 
which were such fun to pull off when I was a child.

The color of the bark is predominantly gray, silvery grey and 
gray-green, blotched with bright silver when the exfoliatiant platelets 
either fall or are pulled off, and is indeed beautiful.  There is little 
evidence of the pinks which are sometimes attributed to the bark.  It is 
a smooth bark, only vaguely bumpy, and bearing no resemblance to the 
deeply fissured and furrowed barks of the pines common to the 
south Atlantic states.

Many small cones fall about the vicinity in the fall and winter, and 
seedlings pop up here and there.  I have not learned to distinguish them 
from those of a neighbor's 50-foot white pine, and have this year begun 
potting some of them up in the hope that some of them will turn out to be 
P. bungeana.  They would make nice gifts or candidates for plant sales.
I will eventually have lots of potted pines and hope it won't be too long 
before I can tell which are which.

There is a magnificent multi-trunked specimen superbly sited at the 
entrance to the B. Y. Morrison Azalea Garden at the National Arboretum in 
Washington, D. C.

Harry Dewey
 
  > At 01:17 PM 5/12/98 -0500, you wrote:
> >  Does anyone out there have experience with this tree? I bought a very
> >young specimen this spring and am wondering about its growth rate and when
> >the bark characteristics will appear.
> >I should do my research beforehand-someday I must get over spring impulse
> >buying : >
> Most of the trees that I have seen, don't show the nice multi-colored bark
> features until they reach a trunk diameter of between 3 and 4 inches.  It gets
> much better once they are about 5" caliper.  there is variation as always
> among
> specimens.  In a good site, it might take about 8-10 years to really see much.
> Gary Kling
> Urbana, IL
> *********************************
Alpine-L, the Electronic Rock Garden Society, L.Parsons & H.Dewey, listowners
To subscribe, send the message INFO to Alpine-L-Request@nic.surfnet.NL
To write Louise or Harry, please use the above address ALWAYS

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@mallorn.com with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE WOODYPLANTS
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index