Umbrella pines planted as long as 125 years ago live happily at the arboretum. The only explanation I have ever been able to provide was “beginner’s luck” - not much help. I emailed him, seeking advice on how to get a Sciadopitys started off right, so I could offer answers to other gardeners who have asked for the secret. Dosmann, the keeper of the living collections at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, the 150-year-old living museum of trees in Boston. This was underscored for me by Michael S. Some sources say the tree will grow in Zones 5 to 8 others say it can survive in Zone 6 on the cold end and Zone 9 on the warm end.īut hardiness, and overall success, depends on a combination of factors, not just winter lows. ![]() Plant Hardiness Zone Map system.īut even someone who did the advance homework I didn’t would have had difficulty finding clear guidance on the requirements of an umbrella pine, including winter-hardiness and heat-tolerance. The move to Zone 5 meant the tree would experience winters about 15 degrees (or a zone and a half) colder, based on the average annual minimum winter temperature of the U.S.D.A. I transported my young tree not even knowing what zone I was headed to - an act of faith, and the blind kind, based in enthusiasm-clouded ignorance. Is each one actually two leaves in a fused pair? Or are they not leaf tissue at all, but modified shoots - flattened stems called cladodes that take on the photosynthetic function? (A more familiar example of cladodes are the stems-cum-leaves of Christmas or Thanksgiving cactus, Schlumbergera.) The umbrella part, at least, offers some insight: The lustrous, oversized needles are arranged in whorls of up to 30, like the spokes of an exceptionally well-reinforced parasol.īut they aren’t your typical conifer needles, and they remain a bit of a mystery even to scientists. My beginner self was quickly schooled in how useless plants’ common names are, as the umbrella pine is not a Pinus, or even a member of the pine family (Pinaceae). Did someone whisper, “Hello, old friend,” or was that overheard in another of my tree-filled dreams? ![]() Long before I knew that, I planted one not far from my umbrella pine. One of the tree’s natural companions in those forests is another conifer, the popular Hinoki cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa). Although the umbrella pine may grow as high as 100 feet in the cool cloud forests of its native central Japan, in a North American garden it is more likely to top out at 30 feet, even after many years. Some Sciadopitys facts were relatively easy to grasp, fortunately. Once the garden had grown in and I hosted tours, my Japanese umbrella pine became the most frequent subject of visitors’ questions - always some version of “What’s that tree with the plastic needles?” But I’d seen a specimen tree at an arboretum and couldn’t shake its come-hither look. ![]() Growing familiar, reliable performers like that Siberian iris would have been more predictable. It still seems strange that I came to know such an oddball conifer as a beginning gardener. And I’m grateful, also, that a tree many gardeners have since told me did not cooperate for them played along with my impulsive desire. It was the young umbrella pine, less than five feet tall, that had barely begun rooting into the first home I had given it before I uprooted it, unable to leave it behind. The other was rare back then, and is still not widely grown. One was as common as could be: a clump of dark purple Siberian iris that still lives here, too.
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