Name

Pinus armandii Franch., Pl. Davidian. 1: 285 (1884).
[Armand's pine; Chinese white pine]

Description

Habit: Medium tree, to about 35 m high but usually smaller, conic at first, developing a wide open crown with whorled horizontal branches bare except for foliage at tips.

Bark: Thin, smooth, pale greenish grey, becoming deeply cracked into small, squarish, flaky plates, with deep vertical fissures near trunk base.

Foliage: Needles in 5s, thinly spread at branchlet ends, hanging like tassels, 8-15 cm long, shiny bright green to blue-green, slender, usually straight but sometimes kinked, crimped or sharply bent near base, lines of stomata on inner sides only.

Branchlets: Green in first year, becoming olive brown, with slight bloom, often at first covered with small translucent glands and resin droplets, usually without hairs, sometimes slightly pubescent.

Winter buds: Cylindric, with a short conic tip, pale brown to red-brown, scales free, slightly resinous.

Cones: Solitary or in clusters on stalks 2-3 cm long, erect at first, pendulous in 2nd year, cylindric-conic, 10-25 cm long, 5-9 cm wide when open, yellowish brown, slightly resinous, scales thick and woody, curved slightly inward or sometimes slightly reflexed, basal scales reflexed. Umbo small and blunt.

Seeds: Ovoid, 10-13 mm long, flattened, appearing wingless [with a rudimentary wing less than 0.1 mm].

Notes

Three varieties are currently recognised, all of which have been planted in NZ. Closely resembles P. wallichiana in foliage but needles of P. armandii have a distinct bend near the leaf base and its young shoots are usually more or less covered in fine glands not present in P. wallichiana which has a distinctly bloomy shoot. P. armandii has distinctive broad, barrel-like cones with thick woody scales and wingless seeds.

Natural Distribution

SE Asia.