This Aleppo pine was planted to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the ANZAC landing at Gallipoli [1]. As Wilcox and Spencer detail, in common with most of the supposed ‘Lone Pines’ planted in Australia and New Zealand the stories told of real connections back to the single pine that remained on Lone Pine Ridge need to be treated with caution, for the pine of the Gallipoli Peninsula, destroyed in the battle, was Pinus brutia and not P. halepensis. Any subsequent tree called a Lone Pine, if not Pinus brutia, could not have come directly from the a cone of the tree on the ridge. This has not stopped many pines, including radiata, pinea and canariensis, being planted as ‘Lone Pines’. Pinus halepensis is commonly grown as a ‘lone pine’ in Australian World War One commemorative sites, and it is therefore not surprising to find this Aleppo pine close by to the cenotaph in Pukenamu Queen’s Park Whanganui.
Reference:
1. Wilcox, M. & D. Spencer, 2007, ‘Stand up for the real Anzac lone pine of Gallipoli’, New Zealand Journal of Forestry, May: 3-9.