Table Mountain Pine, Mountain Pine, Hickory Pine, Prickly Pine

A well-branched small tree, often gnarled and picturesque in form, retaining many clusters of old cones. The trees in the Arnold Arboretu...Read Morem are all attractive, irregular, wider than tall, with flat tops---they remind me of bonsai trees in form, though not in scale. In the Great Smokies, they average 25-38' tall.

I think they would look great in a naturalistic or Japanese-inspired garden, though the sharp needles might present a challenge.

This hard pine is native to the Appalachians from central Pennsylvania down to around where Georgia-Tennessee-South Carolina meet. It get...Read Mores to about 60 feet high, has stout, rigid, often twisted needles in bundles of 2's that are about 1.5 to 2.5 inches long and bears cones about 2.5 to 3.5 inches long that are clustered, very short stalked, persistent, and with sharp prickles on the scales. It grows in dry soils, usually on mountain slopes. In late November 2019 I found two nice specimens in the Conifer Collection on the east side of Morton Arboretum in Lisle, IL looking good, though dropping lots of needles in the fall for winter preparation. In such a regular landscape with a rich, silty-clay loam soil of pH 6.5 to 7.0 with lawn around, they probably won't get over 30 feet high.

A small to medium sized tree with a limited range that is mainly the Appalchian Mountains.

The 2 1/2" to 3 1/2" needles ar...Read Moree flat sided and very prickly. half inch branches do not break cleanly when sharply bent. cones are 2" to 4" long and the short stalked bases are usually off center. The cones remain on the tree for long periods of time. The sometimes 3/16" cone thorns are stout and outcurved.

No other Eastern pine has such sharp tipped needles and long thorned cones.