Caribbean pine is a fast-growing, hard pine tree native to Central America, southeastern Mexico, and the northern Caribbean. It is grown mainly for timber and pulpwood in tropical and subtropical plantations.
Family
Pinaceae (Pine family)
Grows as
Tree
Light
Full sun
Water
Water regularly while young, then tolerates seasonal dry spells once established.
Soil
Well-drained, sandy or acidic soils; tolerates poor, infertile ground.
Temperature
18–30 °C; protect below 0 °C
How easy
Moderate
Native range
SE. Mexico to C. America, Bahamas to W. Cuba
Climate
subtropical
About
The Caribbean pine (Pinus caribaea) is a species of conifer in the family Pinaceae, a hard pine species native to Central America, southeastern Mexico, and the northern West Indies (in Cuba, the Bahamas, and the Turks and Caicos Islands). It belongs to subsection Australes in subgenus Pinus. It inhabits tropical and subtropical coniferous forests such as Bahamian pineyards, in both lowland savannas and montane forests.
Where it grows
It has been proposed that the pines of Australes subsection (of which Caribbean pine is part) arrived to the Caribbean basin from the southeastern United States. Regarding the population in the Bahamas, it has been proposed that this species emigrated into the region from Florida four or five thousand years ago, long after the end of the Ice Age, as the climate became wetter. Based on fossil species assemblages it is believed that the environment on the Bahamas was much less forested and a dry savannah during the glacial maximum some 18,000 years ago when the sea level was some 120 metres (390 feet) lower than it is today.
Uses
Lumber and pulpwood from this tree shipped to Florida is the main export of the Abaco Islands.
[Contains information from Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Heritage Trees from data.gov.sg (National Parks Board), made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0]
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Caribbean pine by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.