Aleppo Pine Seeds

[Raging Bull]

About a year ago I collected a couple of closed pine cones from an Aleppo pine (also called Jerusalem Pine) in Adelaide. I put them into a paper bag and left them on my workshop bench, forgetting all about them. Today, during a long overdue tidy-up, I found them again. I opened the bag and lo and behold they had both opened and released their seeds.
Can anyone please advise me on the best timing season wise to plant these seeds. I don't want to just throw them onto a seed raising tray and hope for the best. I've read a few items online and they are described as being easy to propagate, but I don't want them to rot because they were planted in a moist mixture at the wrong time of the year.
Cheers, Frank.

[Ryceman3]

Based on my experience with other pine species I’d look to plant out around the end of July. Not sure about Aleppo, but I’ve had success with other pines soaking for 24 hours or so then whack em in the fridge before they get planted for a bit.... helps to “wake ‘em up”.... a couple of weeks before. Aleppo pine hey, that’s interesting!

[gyrza]

I have about 200 Aleppo pine seedlings at the moment, from one pine cone . They were planted in September. I got about 90% viability from the seeds I collected. All I did was soak them in warm water for 24 hours. Then i got some sphagnum moss and wet it and then squeeze all the water out so it was damp. Put it and the seeds in a zip lock bag in the vegetable crisper in the fridge. Im not sure exactly how long they were in there for (about 6 weeks at a guess) but it was easy to see when they were ready to plant. The seeds start to split very slightly apart. The split seeds can be hard to see at first but you can see a small amount of white originating from the pointy end down one side.
Hope this helps.
Wayne

[shibui]

There seems to be no need to stratify pine seed in the fridge. All species I've tried here grow without cold no problem - no soaking, no fridge, just straight into a seed tray.
Up there you could probably sow pine seed any time of year and it should sprout and grow happily. Down here I follow the natural cycle so I sow seed at the end of summer (which is when cones open and drop seed on the ground) and they germinate toward the end of winter (occasionally through winter too. A few deg below freezing does not seem to hurt pine seedlings)

[Raging Bull]

Thank you for those answers I'll split the seeds up into 3 or 4 batches , try the different methods and see which one works best.
Just for general information... the Aleppo pines are the same as the ANZAC Lone pine. They are a mediterranian pine and they are actually a pest plant in S.A. They are self sown, along with feral olives, in the reserve opposite my brother-in-law's house. I'm trying to grow some because they don't seem to have the habit of growing branches in whorls like a lot of other pines, their branches are far more random. See attached pic.

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[shibui]

Just for general information... the Aleppo pines are the same as the ANZAC Lone pine.

There is some dispute about the real ID of the Gallipoli lone pine. The trees that are grown in Aus as Lone Pine are descended from a couple of cones brought back by a returning Australian Soldier and they are Pinus halapensis but Pinus halapensis does not actually grow at Gallipoli. It is believed that the real lone pine at Gallipoli is (was) actually Pinus brutia.
The confusion appears to have come because the cones were not collected from the tree. They came from branches used to reinforce the trenches and were probably brought into the area from elsewhere in Turkey https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-06/ ... es/6672018
The pines grown at RSL sites and other memorials in Australia are Pinus halapensis and are all descended from the 2 trees grown from cones brought back from Gallipoli and are referred to as Lone Pines here.
Many other P. halapensis have been planted in Australia but may not be directly descended from those particular seeds so have no particular significance to ANZAC and Gallipoli apart from being the same species.

Personally I have found P. halapensis frustrating for bonsai. It is definitely easy to grow and quite hardy but it holds juvenile foliage for many years and is prone to reverting to juvenile growth after pruning. I ended up with long, bare branches and very little ramification but that's probably more about technique that species.
Not sure if halapensis is treated as a single flush or multi flush pine for maintenance but it will be a few years before you'll need to worry about that.
For development treat as other pines - grow and occasionally cut back to lower needles to get back budding until you have achieved a reasonable trunk and the beginnings of some branching before switching to decandling and other maintenance techniques.

[Matt S]

I'll second Shibui's frustration at growing Aleppo pines. I've had real troubles getting them to backbud so you need to get the ramification started early and protect the inner branches, because once the branches get long and bare there's little you can do about it.

The best Aleppo I have seen only has juvenile growth, the mature needles (which are long and straggly anyway) are cut out and the juvenile shoots are constantly pinched out. I'll see if I can find a picture of it because it's a nice tree.

A lot of War memorials around Australia have an Aleppo pine growing and if you scratch around any nearby garden beds you'll probably find a few seedlings.

Good luck with the seeds RB!

[Raging Bull]

Thanks for these additional hints and advice. I'll take all of this into account. If I get a good %age of the seeds to germinate I can try different options and techniques when they get old enough.
Thanks shibui, I know there's some controversy/debate over the Lone pine thing, I just put my comment re the ANZAC pine in as reference so people know what type of pine I'm talking about.
Cheers, Frank.

[Raging Bull]

It's a glorious Sunday morning and I woke up to a whole lot of my seeds having sprouted to greet the sun. I put these
Aleppo pine seeds in a seed raising tray about 4 weeks ago, hoping the cold weather and then the coming of spring would stimulate them into growth. Now I will have a lot of pines to experiment with, and maybe even plant a pine forest. They are just the first ones to germinate, there should be a lot more to follow. The three seedlings in pots were sown last summer and were the only ones that germinated out of about two dozen seeds. Obviously sown at the wrong time of year, but I was eager to get them in the ground after the pine cones had at last opened to shed their seeds.
Many of my deciduous trees are also stirring into life with Crepe myrtle, tridents, elms and english oaks putting out new leaves. Spring must be just around the corner in S.E. Queensland.
Cheers, Frank

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[PWC]

It's good to see you survived that 2 weeks of winter, always good to see seedlings pop up. I'm surprised that your deciduous trees drop their leaves, thought it wouldn't be cold enough.

Good luck with the pines.