Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Torrey pine

Pinus torreyana

Also called Soledad Pine, Del Mare Pine, Del Mar Pine

Torrey pine
Photo: en:User:Geographer, CC BY 2.5

The Torrey pine is a rare, critically endangered pine native to a few coastal sites in California, growing to 8 to 17 m in the wild, and is rarely grown outside its native region. Its key to growing is full sun and very good drainage in a dry, mild, coastal-style climate.

Family
Pinaceae (Pine family)
Grows as
Tree
Light
Full sun
Water
Water deeply but infrequently, letting the soil dry out between waterings, and avoid summer irrigation once established.
Soil
Sandy, well-drained soil.
Temperature
10–25 °C is comfortable; tolerates mild frost but young trees need protection below about -5 °C.
How easy
Moderate
Safety
Not known to be toxic
Edible
Yes, some parts
Native range
SW. California
Climate
subtropical

About

The Torrey pine (Pinus torreyana) is a rare pine species in California, United States. It is a critically endangered species growing only in coastal San Diego County, and on Santa Rosa Island, offshore from Santa Barbara in Santa Barbara County, and in Monterey County. The Torrey pine is endemic to the California coastal sage and chaparral ecoregion.

Where it grows

The extant population of Pinus torreyana is restricted to trees growing in a narrow strip along the Southern California coast in San Diego. There is also a population of the variety Pinus torreyana var. insularis in two groves on Santa Rosa Island, a California Channel Island off the coast of Santa Barbara, and in Pacific Grove on the foggy Monterey County coast, where a number of massive old specimens exist. The presence of Torrey pines along the semi-arid coast of San Diego and Santa Rosa Island (rainfall less than 15 inches per year) is probably a relict population of a much more extensive Ice Age distribution. Coastal fog during spring and summer along the San Diego and Santa Rosa Island coast provides just enough moisture to supplement the fairly low winter rainfall, allowing for survival of the species in the wild habitat zone.

Other Pinus plants

Rocky Mountains Bristlecone Pine · Arizona Pine · Chinese White Pine · Mexican White Pine · Jack pine · Turkish Pine · Lacebark Pine · Canary Islands Pine · Caribbean pine · Swiss Pine · Mexican Pinyon · Sand Pine

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Torrey 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.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…