Sciadopitys verticillata Seeds | Umbrella Pine
LATIN NAME: Sciadopitys verticillata
COMMON NAME: Umbrella Pine
Plant Profile
Each whorl holds between fifteen and thirty five long, leathery, flexible green cladodes, arranged at the tips of the shoots like the ribs of an umbrella. Anatomically each cladode is a flattened stem structure with a groove down each side, not a leaf at all. The plant’s true leaves are reduced to small brown scales pressed against the stem, and they do no photosynthetic work whatever.
The genus holds one living species and the family holds one genus. Molecular work places the family as the sister group to the yews and the cypresses together, on a branch that separated from the rest of the conifers astonishingly early, so the umbrella pine is not a pine, not a yew and not a cypress, but the surviving end of a lineage of its own.
The oldest fossils attributed to the genus come from the Cretaceous of Japan, and through the warmer parts of the Tertiary the genus was widespread across the northern continents, particularly in Europe, before retreating to its present island refuge. Its foliage is distinctive enough that fossil fragments of the same type have been given their own form genus, which is how palaeobotanists trace the plant’s former range.
The branches and foliage yield a volatile oil on steam distillation, dominated by alpha-pinene with beta-pinene, myrcene, limonene and terpinen-4-ol alongside it, and the yield is low enough to make the oil a rarity. The aroma is resinous and green rather than sweet, and the material has been used in fragrance and in aromatic preparations rather than as a medicine.
Science & Biotechnology
The genus also gave its name to sciadopitysin, one of the biflavones, a pair of flavonoid units joined into a single larger molecule. Biflavones of this type are a chemical signature of ancient conifer lines and occur in a handful of unrelated genera, and their presence in umbrella pine foliage is one more piece of evidence for the plant’s isolated position rather than a clue to any close relative.
Uses & Benefits
The timber is fine-textured, pale and easy to work, and in Japan it has been used in boat building, while the fibrous bark has been worked into the loose caulking material traditionally used to seal the seams of wooden hulls. Neither use is a mass market, and the tree’s real economic weight today is horticultural, as a slow, expensive and much-prized garden specimen and bonsai subject.
Growing from Seed
In the wild the tree grows where the air is moist and the soil never dries right out, in sheltered valleys and on slopes with a steady water supply, and it does not enjoy drought in a garden either. It is very slow, and a specimen that looks like a small Christmas tree may be decades old. Bark on an old trunk is reddish brown and peels in vertical strips.
Take the seed from a ripe cone and sow it in late winter into a lime-free mix of two parts peat, one part leaf mould and one part coarse grit, pressing each seed about its own depth into the surface. Keep the pan cool, damp and shaded, and never let it dry out. Conifer seed of this kind sprouts unevenly, so leave the pan standing for a full season before giving up on it.
Growth is measured in centimetres a year even on a good site. Prick the seedlings out when they stand about five centimetres high, pot them on without touching the taproot, and grow them in light shade for their first seasons. The slow habit and the whorled branches make the tree a natural for training, and it is one of the classic subjects of Japanese miniature work.
Plant it where the soil stays moist but never waterlogged, in sun or light shade with shelter from drying wind, and mulch the roots with leaf mould rather than letting grass compete. It is hardy but dislikes both drought and winter waterlogging, and a plant given the right site needs no feeding, no pruning and no spraying. Deer leave it alone.
Our Take
I planted one umbrella pine knowing I would not see it at its best, and that is the whole point of the tree. It belongs with the other survivors of the old conifer lines: the Wollemi pine is its equal in strangeness, the dawn redwood is the fast counterpart for damp ground, and the Japanese fir is the neighbour it grows beside at home.
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