Triple-trunked Scotch pine, Garden of Quiet Listening, Carleton College, 1976

Scotch pine in 1985

Scotch pine in 1988, right after selective pruning, same height

Painting of Priest Myoe meditating in a Japanese red pine, Kozanji, Kyoto, Japan

Scotch pine in 2001, just prior to selective pruning, same height.

I found this Scotch pine in the local nurseryman's front yard. It has three vertical trunks, regrown from branches coming off the main trunk about 2 feet off the ground after the tree was cut as a Christmas tree. You can bet no one imagined back then what a garden beauty this tree would become. I thinned out about one third of the crowded branches, and the tree was brought in and planted by tree spade when the garden was made in 1976.

Foliage is thickening (getting more "cloud" like), with trunk and branches revealed here and there. The tree is beginning to take on the appearance of a full-grown, aged pine, though it is only twelve feet tall, the same height as when it was planted in 1976.

Do you see a resemblance between this pine and the one in the Carleton garden? You may be surprised to learn that the Scotch pine (Pinus sylvestris) and Japanese red pine (Pinus densiflora) are close relatives, separated by only one species, Pinus sylvestriformis, native to the Caucasus and China.