Plant · P-558

Italian Stone Pine

Pinus pinea

Italian Stone Pine is the umbrella-shaped Mediterranean pine that produces pignoli, one of the two major commercial pine nuts worldwide. It grows naturally on coastal sand and gravel, takes chalky and alkaline soil without trouble, and needs hot dry summers with mild wet winters to thrive. Its cones take three years to ripen and can then hang closed for several more, so a single stand yields several years of nuts rather than one clean harvest. Its fallen needles release a compound that keeps the ground beneath its canopy nearly bare of other seedlings.