Beautiful pine from the land of the Aztecs
Montezuma conjures us all kinds of images in my mind. From Palaces of Montezuma by Grinderman, rendered beautifully in a recent on-line concert by Nick Cave alone on piano, to Neil Young's song Cortez the Killer and the entire album called Zuma, or indeed the man himself, usually written Moctezuma II or Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin, the ninth ruler of the Aztecs. Rich pickings.
English botanist, Aylmer Bourke Lambert, described today's species, Pinus montezumae, in 1832, in honour of Moctezuma II, famous today for his encounters with (and death at the hands of) Spanish conquistadors. The species, known commonly as Montezuma's Pine - or less elegantly, in hard copy of HortFlora, also Rough-branched Mexican Pine, and in Mexico, Ocote - grows in the areas once occupied by Aztecs (central and southern Mexico) as well as a little further south into Guatemala.
It favours mountain slopes with decent rains, but will grow in dryer areas where it tends to be not as tall and more branched. The specimen I've photographed is, like last week's, from Geoff Bogle's Arboretum at Hoddles Creek, a well-watered site.
The species is uncommon in cultivation. We have one planted a nearly 50-year-old specimen in Melbourne Gardens but Honorary Associate Roger Spencer considers it to be a possible hybrid (in HortFlora).
In case you are wondering, there is a Smooth-branched Mexican Pine, called Pinus pseudostobus. That species has smoother bark, as well as thinner needles, different shaped cones (like an egg rather than long and conical in the Montezuma Pine, in my hand below) and waxy young shoots.
You'll also notice on Montezuma Pine, the distinctively large and fringed buds and very long needles (mostly in clusters of five for those of you counting, as you should to determine a pine species).
None of my pictures show the bark particularly clearly but in this enlargement of the picture at the top of the blog you can see it is lifting slightly (i.e. rough).
There are other plants named after Montezuma, the most famous being Taxodium mucronatum, known as the Montezuma Cypress. I'm assuming in this case it's just the fact it grows in Mexico and that is where the Aztecs, and their leaders, lived.
[By the way, we have some large specimens of that conifer in the Melbourne Gardens, including the largest tree on site, at about 40 metres tall. However the reference specimen I'm going to pop in here is (yes, perversely) from the bonsai collection at the National Arboretum in Canberra (photographed last year).
But back to our Montezuma Pine. From Wikipedia, I see the resin from the wood burns well, meaning a cut branch can used as a 'fire starter' for campfires and barbeques. Also that is is (apparently) grown in plantations in Queensland, and does well by the sea in New South Wales. That's something Roger didn't put in his HortFlora, but I'm sure he'd argue this is outside the scope of 'south-eastern Australia'. And its all a long way from Mexico and Moctezuma.
The species is uncommon in cultivation. We have one planted a nearly 50-year-old specimen in Melbourne Gardens but Honorary Associate Roger Spencer considers it to be a possible hybrid (in HortFlora).
In case you are wondering, there is a Smooth-branched Mexican Pine, called Pinus pseudostobus. That species has smoother bark, as well as thinner needles, different shaped cones (like an egg rather than long and conical in the Montezuma Pine, in my hand below) and waxy young shoots.
You'll also notice on Montezuma Pine, the distinctively large and fringed buds and very long needles (mostly in clusters of five for those of you counting, as you should to determine a pine species).
None of my pictures show the bark particularly clearly but in this enlargement of the picture at the top of the blog you can see it is lifting slightly (i.e. rough).
There are other plants named after Montezuma, the most famous being Taxodium mucronatum, known as the Montezuma Cypress. I'm assuming in this case it's just the fact it grows in Mexico and that is where the Aztecs, and their leaders, lived.
[By the way, we have some large specimens of that conifer in the Melbourne Gardens, including the largest tree on site, at about 40 metres tall. However the reference specimen I'm going to pop in here is (yes, perversely) from the bonsai collection at the National Arboretum in Canberra (photographed last year).
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| A small Taxodium mucronatum (Montezuma Cypress) |
But back to our Montezuma Pine. From Wikipedia, I see the resin from the wood burns well, meaning a cut branch can used as a 'fire starter' for campfires and barbeques. Also that is is (apparently) grown in plantations in Queensland, and does well by the sea in New South Wales. That's something Roger didn't put in his HortFlora, but I'm sure he'd argue this is outside the scope of 'south-eastern Australia'. And its all a long way from Mexico and Moctezuma.
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