Black pine/white pine cross pollination?

[daiviet_nguyen]

Is black pine and white pine cross pollination possible? If possible, what would the cross-tree look like? And has anybody seen such a tree, please?

Best regards.

[63pmp]

Well anything is possible, but I would think it's very unlikely. Trees are very resistant to cross pollination, for it to happen they have to be very similar genetically. My thoughts; pollen travels for many many miles and every plant within cooee is pollinating with each other, plants have developed a natural ability to prevent cross polination, such as timing of flowering, flower and cone design, insect or bird required transmission of pollen. Also, the Japanese have been very keen gardeners for many years, growing the two species together, if it was to happen, it probably would have done so by now.


Paul

[bodhidharma]

Well said Paul, in a roundabout way i guess they have, as the Japanese have been grafting white pines onto black pine stock for a while now. If cross pollination was likely they would have figured it out by now and played with it.

[shibui]

I have not heard about black/white pine cross but I believe that black/red pine hybrid is relatively common where the 2 species are planted as street and park trees in the same area.
White pines are from a different group in the pinus genus so probably less chance of producing a hybrid but Black and Red are more closely related so can cross.
63pmp is correct that under natural conditions trees are relatively resistant to crossing but when we start to intervene and plant species together that are naturally separated in different geographic areas crosses are remarkably common.