Flora of New Zealand Series

Austrian pine

Medium-sized tree, generally with bushy, widespreading habit and long, forked branches. Lvs in dense terminal masses concentrated near shoot apices, thick, rigid, dark green, with thickened hypodermal cells usually in 3-5 rows; apex pungent.

N.: Rotorua area; S.: Hanmer area (N. Canterbury), Mackenzie County (S. Canterbury), especially around Lake Tekapo.

Austria, Italy, Greece 1957

Around forests, plantations and shelter belts, occasionally aggressively invading nearby grassland to c. 1000 m.

As with Corsican pine, trees of Austrian pine cone freely and produce large quantities of viable seed. However, this subsp. has been much less extensively planted because Corsican pine replaced it after 1930, being a much better and faster growing form [Weston, G. C., Exotic Forest Trees in New Zealand (1957)]. The 2 subspp. grade into each other and are often not clearly separable. Thus they are often confused or simply known as P. nigra, and have been planted together in inland South Id areas. Thus, it is possible that Austrian pine is more extensively naturalised than indicated above because young trees are very difficult to distinguish from Corsican pine. The greater number of thickened hypodermal lf cells in Austrian pine are reflected in the stouter, more rigid and more pungent lvs which provide the best characters to separate the 2 subspp.  subsp. nigra has usually been known as P. austriaca or P. nigra var. austriaca in N.Z.