Hainan White Pine
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Hainan White Pine | ||||||||||||||||
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The Hainan White Pine or Fenzel's Pine (Pinus fenzeliana) is a tree restricted to the island of Hainan off southern China. This pine reaches heights of 20 m with a trunk 1m in diameter.
The needles are in fascicles of five, and 5-13 cm long. The cones are 6-11 cm long, with thick, woody scales; the seeds are large, about 8-15 mm long, with a vestigial 3 mm wing, similar to the related Chinese White Pine (Pinus armandii). Hainan White Pine differs from that species in the shorter needles, smaller cones, and in being adapted to a subtropical rainforest habitat.
A pine from the Dabie Shan mountains in Anhui, eastern China, first described as a species Pinus dabeshanensis, is occasionally treated as a variety of this species, but more commonly as a variety of Pinus armandii, which it more closely resembles.
Reports of Pinus fenzeliana from Vietnam have not been verified; trees in this area have proved to be either Vietnamese White Pine (Pinus dalatensis) or Guangdong White Pine (Pinus wangii), which both differ markedly in cone and seed size & shape, though similar in foliage.
External link
Pinus fenzeliana cone photo (http://www.pinetum.org/cones/PNfenzeliana.jpg)