Famous for hardiness and great age. The oldest specimen, thought over 5,000 years old, grows somewhere in California’s White Mountains, its location a closely guarded secret. Introduced in 1863.

Native to mountain areas of California, Nevada and Utah in the US where it grows at high altitudes up to the extreme tree line (3,600m asl), often forming krummholz.

Monoecious. A five-needle pine. Seed cones take two years to mature. Birds, especially corvids, distribute seeds. Closely related to the Rocky Mountain Bristlecone Pine (Pinus aristata), which grows further east in Colorado and New Mexico.

Maximum height 15m, stem diameter 200cm, with an irregular, often stunted crown. Old trees carry much dead wood, sometimes forming a ‘strip-bark’ habit where wind-borne sand and ice strip the cambium, leaving living tissue only on the leeward side. Needles in fives, incurved, dense on the shoots.

Very rare outside of its native range due to lack of suitable habitat. A cultivar ‘Sherwood compact’ exists among specialist growers.

Being one of few trees that survive at these altitudes, it plays an important role in providing food and shelter for birds and small mammals.

Once threatened by logging, now protected in various US National Parks. Climate change is a concern due to lack of alternative habitat for a species already at its altitudinal limit.

No longer applicable. Native Americans once made a poultice from its resin. Its extremely strong and close-grained timber was used by European settlers for mine pit props.