53. Astley Ainslie Pine
A supremely graceful Bhutan pine grows in the heart of The Grange, Edinburgh’s best address.
Edinburgh’s Astley Ainsley Hospital opened in 1923 in the grounds of a grand villa, St Roque House, in The Grange, the city’s grandest neighbourhood. The arboretum surrounding the hospital was a tonic for recuperating patients, but the site is being redeveloped, so we must hope its astonishing trees will continue to prosper. After entering the grounds at Grange Loan past gatehouses and wrought iron gates, the road sweeps round to the villa, where an imposing, multi-trunked Bhutan pine can be admired. These Asian pines are not usually long-lived, but this one is aged and conspicuously characterful, a mature example that clearly thrives in the rarefied conditions here.
Species details
Bhutan Pine
Pinus wallichiana
Where to find it
Newbattle Terrace, Edinburgh EH10 4SF
///ripe.slap.rewarding | 55.930156, -3.1989640
Bhutan pine notes
Although its name suggests a modest distribution in the small landlocked Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, these elegant pine trees are native to a huge arc from Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bhutan to southern China’s Yunnan province. They were introduced to these islands in the first half of the nineteenth century and have been valued for their bunches of pendulous needles, and large, long cones. They stand out from more common, and spikier, European pines species primarily because those bunches of needles are so much more delicate by dint of their growing in bunches of five rather than pairs like Scots pine.
