Of the three Pines of the Himalayas this species is the most important. It grows on the outer slopes and foot-hills from Bhotan to Afghanistan. The wood is used for construction and for the manufacture of charcoal, the thick soft bark is valuable for tanning, the resin is abundant and of commercial importance, and the nuts are gathered for food. The tree is not hardy in cool-temperate climates, but has been successfully grown in northern Italy.
It differs from P. canariensis in the usually protuberant apophysis of the cone, in the thick outer walls of the leaf-endoderm and in the nearly smooth walls of the ray-tracheids of the wood. In the dimensions of cone and leaf, in the dermal tissues and resin-ducts of the leaf and in the peculiar coloring of the seed-wing, the two species are alike.
Fig. 160, Cone. Fig. 161, Leaf-fascicle. Fig. 162, Magnified leaf-section.
23. PINUS CANARIENSIS
- 1825 P. canariensis Smith in Buch, Canar. Ins. 159.
Spring-shoots uninodal, pruinose. Bud-scales with conspicuously long free fimbriate margins. Leaves in fascicles of 3, the sheath persistent, from 20 to 30 cm. long; the hypoderm often in large masses, the resin-ducts external, the endoderm with thin outer walls. Cones from 10 to 17 cm. long, short-pedunculate, ovoid-conic; apophyses lustrous or sublustrous nut-brown, more or less pyramidal, the umbo unarmed; seeds as in the last species.
A species confined to the Canary Islands, but cultivated in northern Italy. The stately habit of this tree is seen in Schröter's portrait (Exc. Canar. Ins. t. 15).