Aleppo pine (Halepensis pine)
Appearance: Evergreen, but usually mafe a pinewood in height 15-20 meters. The crown is narrow in young specimens, conical, later more and more columnar or irregular. The trunk is relatively short, usually skewed. Already at a low height from the ground, the tree forks. The branches are strong, often twisted and crooked.
The bark is initially silvery, smooth and slightly shiny, it becomes more and more fractured with age and falls off the little ones, reddish brown plates. Quite slender shoots, light brown-green or gray-green, naked, Length buds approx 8 mm are usually slightly bent and elongated.
Two pins on shoots, placed very loosely and mostly only in front of the twigs and shoots, quite slim and flexible, sharp and sometimes twisted at the front, green and slightly shiny.
Female cones grow singly or in groups of two or three on short stems slightly tilted back. They are long 5-12 cm, and the width 4 cm, They are sharpened and very slender. They stay on the tree for many years, what causes, there are many of them in the older ones, thicker branches. When mature, they are shiny, brown to dark brown, and the shields on their scales are strongly convex.
Habitat: Aleppo pine prefers warm soils, seek, even quite rocky, and in terms of resistance to heat and drought, it surpasses many other conifers, Occurrence: It grows wild throughout the Mediterranean area, creating tree stands mostly in coastal areas, while in hilly areas, inland, it is much less common. Outside the natural area of distribution, it is rarely planted, even as an ornamental tree. Flowering period: June to July.
General thoughts: Aleppo pine eagerly seizes abandoned agricultural lands or fallow land and plays the role of a pioneering tree species there, It often grows in dense clusters as a shrub, and therefore this species, similarly to the related maritime pine, it is readily used in windbreaking plantings. Its heartwood is dark red in color. while in white – yellowish, It is considered of little value and is hardly ever used. The Canary Island pine is similar to the Aleppo pine (Canary pine). In this species, the pins grow three per shoot and have them 20 and even 30 cm in length. It grows wild only in the Canary Islands (island endemic), however, in the Mediterranean it is sometimes planted as an ornamental tree.
In pine species with dense foliage, long lines of numerous stomatal openings hidden under a whitish wax coating are clearly recognizable with a medium-powerful magnifier..