Pine mountain ... What features does this wonderful plant have?

One hundred species of this plant are forests in the temperate climatic zone or on the mountain slopes of the subtropics. The ever green mountain pine is most often represented by trees with very different forms of crowns and sometimes shrubs. In young plants, the bark is bright and smooth, but with age it changes its appearance, thickens, crackles, becomes brown or gray.

According to the species, the mountain pine differs in location and size of cones and needles. On short young branches needles needles grow in bundles. Each bundle can remain green and alive for a period of two to eleven years. These photophilous plants, very unpretentious to the composition of the soil and to moisture, extract nutrients from the well-developed and deep-penetrating root system. However, in urban conditions, with a high level of smoke and gas pollution, they develop worse than in clean air. In natural conditions, the life expectancy of the pine reaches three hundred to five hundred years.

Deserves attention to the way in which the pine mountain pollinates. Pollination occurs usually in May, in some more northern areas - early June, at a time when the young needles begin to unfold. During this period, the trees are literally covered with yellow pollen, and the wind spreads it, helping to accomplish pollination. Pine blossoms start to bear fruit at the age of six-ten years.

Pine seeds develop in cones, which finally ripen one year after pollination, around November, with cones full of seeds on the tree very much. By the beginning of winter young shoots are lignified, and their apical buds are covered with a protective layer of pine resin. These measures are aimed at protecting the tree from frost, although the apical shoots in very severe frosts are still damaged by frost, but this does not affect the development of the whole plant.

Most species of pine by the age of twenty already have a barrel height of twenty meters and a crown up to three meters in diameter. There are species that do not correspond to this, for example, growing on the territory between the Balkans and on the eastern side of the Alps, the mountain pine Mugus is a shrub landed on the ground, which can reach a maximum height of one and a half or two meters. The plant is very beautiful, has many symmetrically planted cones with a thorn in the center, in color reminiscent of cinnamon. This species very well tolerates our winters, so it is often chosen to decorate the rock garden, or steep slope on sites in our climatic latitudes.

Very beautiful and pine mountain Pumilio, common in the Alps, Carpathians and the Balkans. It also spreads along the slopes of the mountains, but reaches three meters not only upward, but also in breadth. Designers use it very actively to decorate stony areas of the earth. The plant tolerates frosts well. And its branches along with the needles are directed upward. The plant has many cones of dark brown hue.

At a young age of up to five years, the mountain pine very well tolerates the transplant and easily takes root. In a more mature age, transplanting plants is risky.