Pinus radiata Monterey pine

Closed female cone of Pinus radiata. From Forest Trees of the Pacific Slope, USDA, 1907, George B. Sudworth

Needles are in threes about 5 inches long, and the cones are about the same length and noticeably asymmetrical in attachment to the branch. The asymmetry is associated with dwarfing of the base scales on the side to which the cone leans. Monterey pine grows natively along the California coast in just three stands: near Point Año Nuevo north of Santa Cruz, at Cambria, and on the Monterey Peninsula. On Cedros and Guadalupe islands off Baja California, a two-needled island form grows above 2000 feet.

It was formerly used as lumber in California but became very popular for landscape use. Monterey pines are all over the campus. Signs of distress have long been common: dieback, fungus, borers, whose depredations were already noted in 1927, and massive pitch exudations. Many have been removed. Large ones that once rose through the groves along Jane Stanford Way near Hoover Tower have been lost in recent winter storms, though a few remain in that area: two near the west corner of the Shultz Building, one at the southwest corner of Burnham Pavilion, and three around the Schwab Residential Center, including on its east side. Two stand on Serra Street opposite the Recycling Center.

In spite of its modest impact in its native environment, it has come to be a most important tree for timber production in New Zealand, Chile, Australia, and South Africa, where it is relatively free from insect pests. The dark, regularly spaced pine plantations are, as a result of the absence of insects for food, rather eerie places: there are no spiders, no birds, and no insectivorous mammals in the exotic forests. Plantations are thinned two or three times providing saleable wood chips and poles, and felled at 40 years for sawn timber, particle board, and paper production.

Name derivation: Pinus – the Latin name; radiata – radiating (perhaps relating to the whorls of cones about the branches).