I am known for knowing an honestly useless amount of information about various bird and tree species (there is no small possibility that this quality can be traced back to advanced geo with Mr. Brownstein). I do not, however, know much about the nature of southern Spain, so I was very interested in what the guide shared with us. One of the plants that he introduced us to on the hike was the Aleppo pine tree, which I will talk about in more detail in this field note.
The Aleppo pine tree looks a lot like the pine trees we have in the Northeast, but it has a few distinctions. Like the red pine, its needles usually come in groups of two, but they can sometimes be found in groups of three, which is characteristic of the pitch pine (my favorite pine tree). Similar to the red pine, its bark is also dark and vaguely reddish in color, but it is a much shorter tree than the red pine, and its trunk sometimes grows in a crooked/curved trajectory, especially when it grows on a hill or ledge. This is also much more similar to the pitch pine than the red pine (the red pine is usually the type of pine that dominates tall, dense forests, whereas pitch pines are more often found on rocky mountainsides).
Pine trees have a lot of personal significance for me. The white pine is the official state tree of Maine (and it used to be the major feature on the state flag), and Bowdoin’s campus is dominated by pines. There are also a huge number of pitch pines in Acadia National Park, which is a place where I spent a lot of time over the past year and is a place I love deeply.
