Gregg's pine is a small to medium-sized conifer native to eastern Mexico, grown as a timber and plantation tree in warm subtropical areas. It needs full sun and well-drained soil.
Family
Pinaceae (Pine family)
Grows as
Tree
Light
Full sun
Water
Water regularly while young, then allow the soil to dry between waterings; avoid waterlogging.
Soil
Well-drained, slightly acidic to neutral soil.
Temperature
Tolerates roughly -10 to 35 °C once established; protect young trees from hard frost.
How easy
Moderate
Native range
NE. & C. Mexico
Climate
temperate
About
Pinus greggii, or Gregg's pine, is a small to medium-sized species of conifer in the family Pinaceae, a pine native to eastern Mexico, found in two distinct regions. It has an open crown and long and slender branches. The needles are in bundles of three with an average length of 11 cm. The cones are produced singly or in groups of up to ten. The bark on the upper trunk is smooth. Pinus greggii is introduced in several countries.
How to grow it
The first recorded introduction of Pinus greggii was to Britain in about 1905 from the northern population; two specimens were at first grown under glass at Kew but then moved to outdoor planting at Bedgebury in 1926; one of these died in 1965, the other survived until the mid 1970s, by which time other introductions had been made. One was also planted at Fota in Ireland in 1911. Other introductions from the southern population have been made to approximately 10 countries in the subtropics between the 1960s and 1980s. Trials from both northern and southern populations were carried out in Brazil, Colombia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Zimbabwe in the late 1980s. These trials have resulted in plantations on a limited scale (e.g. 1000 ha per year in South Africa). Pinus greggii is also introduced in Italy, India, Nepal and Argentina.
Where it grows
Pinus greggii is found in Mexico in the Sierra Madre Oriental, only in a limited area in the states of Coahuila, Nuevo León and Hidalgo. It occurs farther north than its close relative, Pinus patula, though the range of var. australis overlaps slightly. Natural hybrids exist and that artificial hybrids have been successfully made.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Pinus greggii 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.