Central Europe and southern Asia
30-40 foot tall pine with a narrow, densely columnar habit in youth, becoming open and flat topped with spreading, drooping branches when mature. Bark gray-green, smooth, ridged-and-furrowed, with scaly ridges when mature. Five-needle-pine, with densely set, rather stiff, straight, 2 to 3 inch long, blunt-pointed needles with finely toothed margins. Needles dark green outside with bluish white stomatic lines underneath. Cones are terminal, short-stalked, erect-ovoid, apex blunt, 2 to 3 inch long, greenish violet at first turning purplish brown when mature. Cones never open but fall in the spring of the third year and seeds are disseminated by birds or through decomposition of scales. Pinus cembra is a picturesque and hardy tree; useful in mass plantings or as a specimen tree.
Lustrous dark green outside. Bluish white stomatic lines underneath
purple-brown cone
