Pinus flexilis James

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Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Pinus flexilis' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/pinus/pinus-flexilis/). Accessed 2024-03-18.

Genus

Common Names

  • Limber Pine

Glossary

apex
(pl. apices) Tip. apical At the apex.
appressed
Lying flat against an object.
branchlet
Small branch or twig usually less than a year old.
clone
Organism arising via vegetative or asexual reproduction.
entire
With an unbroken margin.
glabrous
Lacking hairs smooth. glabrescent Becoming hairless.
section
(sect.) Subdivision of a genus.

References

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Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Pinus flexilis' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/pinus/pinus-flexilis/). Accessed 2024-03-18.

A tree 40 to 60, sometimes 80 ft high; branches long, slender; the young parts so flexible that they can be bent double without breaking; young shoots shining green, perfectly glabrous or with minute brownish down. Leaves in fives, persisting for about seven years, often pointing forwards, or the youngest ones even appressed to the branchlet, 212 to 312 in. long, triangular in section, all three sides marked with three or four white lines of stomata; margins quite entire, apex finely pointed; leaf-sheaths 12 to 58 in. long, soon falling away. Cones 3 to 5 in. long, 112 in. thick before the scales open. Bot. Mag., t. 8467.

Native of the Rocky Mountains from Alberta and British Columbia southward to S. California, Arizona, and New Mexico; it was introduced to the Harvard Botanic Garden, Boston, by Dr Parry in 1861, from Colorado, and must have reached Britain soon after, since the trees at Kew came from Dickson and Turnbull of Edinburgh in 1871–2. The reputed introduction by Jeffrey in 1851 was really of P. albicaulis.

P. flexilis is easily distinguished from all the other five-needled pines, except P. albicaulis, by the absence of teeth on the leaf-edges in combination with the deciduous leaf-sheaths and the glabrous or very finely downy young shoots. From P. albicaulis it is most reliably distinguished by its cones, which are longer (sometimes 10 in. long on wild trees), shed their seeds as soon as they are ripe, and soon fall from the tree.

A tree at Kew, by the Isleworth Gate, pl. 1872, measures 54 × 434 ft (1970). There are smaller examples in the Edinburgh and Cambridge Botanic Gardens and in the National Pinetum at Bedgebury.

From the Supplement (Vol. V)

specimens: Kew, pl. 1872, 57 × 5 ft (1978) and 66 × 414 ft (1981); Brocklesby Park, Lincs., 58 × 514 ft (1977); Leighton Arboretum, Powys, 40 × 512 ft (1975); Rammerscales, Dumfr., 35 × 414 ft (1984).

† cv. ‘Firmament’. – A small tree with ascending branches; foliage greyish. A clone formerly in the trade as P. flexilis ‘Glauca’ (Dendroflora No. 19, p. 5 (1982)).