Description: Beautiful, large tree with crown of spreading branches that become rounded and irregular and rich blue-green foliage. Once height growth ceases, becoming flat topped on long, bare, straight bole. Many variants in native areas like Black Wood of Rannoch.

Height: 20-35 m Diameter: 0.6-1.5 m

Shoots: Pale greenish brown, glabrous; strong shoots finely ribbed. Bud cylindric, pointed, brown or dark red, some with white resin, a few scales just free at the tips.

Needles: evergreen; two in bundle; 4-7 cm long (may be three or four in bundle and up to twice as long on vigorous young trees). Stiff, slightly flattened, twisted and spreading, thick and broad; blue-green.

Bark: Reddish-brown, thin; becoming pink tinged yellow or grey and shedding in papery or scaly plate, sometimes deeply fissured black and dark red. In upper crown, orange-brown, finely scaly.

Flowers: Male flowers clustered at base of weaker new shoots, bright yellow. occasionally crimson before they shed pollen in late May; female flowers one to five at tips of new strong shoots, pale pink then dark rosy-purple by June, globular with scales protruding.

Cones: Bright green and down-turned by year after flowering; pale yellow-brown or dull grey-brown and woody by next year. 4-7 cm long; egg-shaped, short-stalked; opening at maturity; cone-scales thin, flattened, often with minute prickle.

Habitat: In sparse woods on its own, with an undergrowth of grasses and heathers, or in mixed woodland with beeches, firs and larches. On plains in north, but in mountains from 500m to 1800m further south, sometimes reaching the tree-line. A sun-loving species which can withstand high temperatures and drought, conditions which mark it as a continental species. A frugal tree tolerating almost any subsoil, from loams to sand, even gravel or peat. Tolerates city smoke.

Range: Across Europe and N. Asia, south to Turkey. Isolated nuclei in Scotland, the Iberian peninsula, central France, the Balkans and Asia Minor. The native pine of the Scottish Highlands, this is the most widely distributed pine in the world and one of the most important European timber trees. In Central and Western Europe it was widespread in some phases of the postglacial epoch, but is now confined to areas and habitats where for one reason or another it can withstand the competition of deciduous forests or of the Norway Spruce (Picea abies). It was native to northern England until a few centuries ago, and it is possible that Scots pine of the heathlands of southern England may descend partly from trees which have persisted since earlier postglacial times.

Height, habit and characteristics of the wood depend on the environment and climatic conditions. The sapwood is whitish, the heartwood deep red. One of only three conifers native to the UK, and the only one with palatable seeds, Scots Pine is the principal food source for the dwindling population of native Red Squirrels. The buds are used in medicine for their balsamic properties and turpentine is extracted from the resin. At one time the needles were soaked, the fibres removed and used as a vegetable horse-hair for padding.

Information: Audubon (1980), Mitchell (1988), MacDonald (1984)

Source/Purchased/Planted: Two in the shelter belt for the walled garden ("side strip") pre-date our main interest in trees. One of these has had an unfortunate lean owing to weak roots on the windward side for some years and may eventually have to be felled, though it is currently doing a convincing job of putting on vertical new top growth. In October 1998, these two trees had reached heights of 3.85 m (upright) and 3.3 m (leaning).

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