Pinus wallichiana

Pinus wallichiana is a coniferous evergreen tree native to the Himalaya, Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountains, from eastern Afghanistan east across northern Pakistan and north west India to Yunnan in southwest China. It grows in mountain valleys at altitudes of 1800–4300 m (rarely as low as 1200 m), between 30 m and 50 m in height. It favours a temperate climate with dry winters and wet summers. In Pashto, it is known as Nishtar. This tree is often known as Bhutan pine, (not to be confused with the recently described Bhutan white pine, Pinus bhutanica, a closely related species). Other names include blue pine, Himalayan pine and Himalayan white pine. In the past, it was also known by the invalid botanic names Pinus griffithii McClelland or 'Pinus excelsa' Wall., Pinus chylla Lodd. when the tree became available through the European nursery trade in 1836, nine years after the Danish botanist Nathaniel Wallich (1784~1856) first introduced seeds to England. The leaves ('needles') are in fascicles (bundles) of five and are 12–18 cm long. They are noted for being flexible along their length, and often droop gracefully. The cones are long and slender, 16–32 cm, yellow-buff when mature, with thin scales; the seeds are 5–6 mm long with a 20–30 mm wing. Typical habitats are mountain screes and glacier forelands, but it will also form old-growth forests as the primary species or in mixed forests with deodar, birch, spruce, and fir. In some places it reaches the tree line. Pine is a coniferous evergreen softwood tree of the family Pinaceae, growing up to 12 to 24 m. Its Trunk is deeply furrowed and reaches up to a diameter of 1 m or more at the bottom. For commercial purpose, pine is classified as soft and as hard. The wood of soft pines, like white, sugar and pinon pines are relatively soft. They have close-grained white sapwood which is very thin and white. Pines like Scotch, Corsica, and lobolis have relatively hard timber of dark colour. Their wood is coarse-grained often thick sapwood and there is a large amount of resin. Pine is a nonflowering plant and its reproductive organs are called cones. Male and female cones are present in the same plant. Male cones, bearing the pollen grain are of a scaly arrangement. Each scale bears two pollen sacs. The wood is moderately hard, durable and highly resinous. It is a good firewood but gives off a pungent resinous smoke. It is a commercial source of turpentine which is superior quality than that of P. roxburghii but is not produced so freely. It is also a popular tree for planting in parks and large gardens, grown for its attractive foliage and large, decorative cones. It is also valued for its relatively high resistance to air pollution, tolerating this better than some other conifers.