AusBonsai

Just thought this might be the more appropriate forum to ask this question. Is this P. thunbergii or nigra (or something else)? Have some additional pics - I’m leaning toward thunbergii based on the bark, but I’m no expert.










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Hi Harshadg , Neither , both Black pines Japanese and European have silvery light coloured shoots . With literally hundreds of two needles pines , ID is a long time search .

Google 2 needle pines and ID the cones , then the bark , shoots .growth habit .

Different areas and climate produce varying and subtle changes but the cone shape , colour of the shoots and the bark plate /block arrangement rarely changes

I spent well over a decade searching for ID's on pines and it can be an exhausting time consuming task . Good luck

Cheers Alpineart

Pinus halapensis or P. brutia might be more likely given South Aus is drier.
Pretty sure both are 2 needle pines but might be a little difficult to tell one from the other. RSL seems to have been confused about what they grow as the 'lone pine' for many years.

alpineart wrote: ↑June 6th, 2020, 8:02 am Hi Harshadg , Neither , both Black pines Japanese and European have silvery light coloured shoots .

Agree with Alpine here... I think from the photos you put up you can discount either of these. Check out what shibui mentions, I also was thinking P Halapensis also but it’s just a guess really.

Yes this makes sense. The pine is in the yard of an RSL. I guess it must be an Aleppo pine.

If you had mentioned it was in a RSL yard we would not have had to go through all this guessing. Pines at RSL facilities are almost always p. halapensis. Highly unlikely any RSL would grow a Japanese tree I think.
It is believed that the actual lone pine at Gallipoli was P brutia but P. halapensis also grows nearby and branches were used to cover trenches. Aussie soldiers collected cones from some of the trench covering branches and sent them home. Seeds were grown but turned out to be P. halapensis but still known here as 'lone pine'. The original 'lone pine' seedling tree from the War memorial has been cloned by the Australian War memorial and sent to most RSL clubs as a living memorial.
The cones are similar size to black and red pines but juvenile growth is distinctive. P. halapensis grows well through drier areas and often seen as windbreaks in western NSW and SA.

You can still grow it as bonsai but I have had some difficulty getting good budding and ramification. Probably down to technique.

To confuse the issue again, here are photos of Aleppo pine cones that I collected and harvested the seeds from in S.A. Also the trees they were collected from. As you can see, they differ in size and shape from the ones you have collected. But I don't know if that is due to environmental factors or because it's a different pine.

The cones posted earlier were open. These photos are of unopened cones. When these dry out and open up they should be much more rounded and look similar to the earlier ones.
Tree shape is quite similar for the older ones - open rounded canopy with a mostly intact trunk.
Very likely the same species I think.