Corsican pine (CP)
Pinus nigra ssp. laricio (Syn. P. nigra var. maritima)
We use some essential cookies to make this website work.
We’d like to set additional cookies to understand how you use forestresearch.gov.uk, remember your settings and improve our services.
We also use cookies set by other sites to help us deliver content from their services.
Preparing to search
Pinus nigra ssp. laricio (Syn. P. nigra var. maritima)
Native to Corsica. Related black pine species (e.g. Calabrian pine) are found in Italy and Spain but do not have as good form.
The best seed sources are from good British seed stands or imports from Corsica.
A light demanding pioneer species with the best growth found on acid freely draining sandy loams. Requires a warm summer climate, tolerates heat and drought, windfirm but susceptible to frost damage, therefore best suited to the drier lowland areas of Britain where it produces higher volumes than other pines. Will grow on most soils except moist or compacted ones, and will grow on calcareous soils provided these are well drained. It tolerates exposure and pollution and will grow well on sand dunes provided it is not directly exposed to salt spray.
Corsican pine is very susceptible to red band needle blight, and is currently not recommended for planting because of the impact of this disease. Lophodermella needle disease and shoot dieback caused by Brunchorstia are also widespread on Corsican pine of all ages although much less damaging than red band needle blight. Like Scots pine, Corsican can also suffer root and butt rot caused by Heterobasidion, with occasional mortality of young trees.
Shoot killing by pine-shoot beetle (Tomicus piniperda) can also reach significant levels in Corsican pine.
A species that was predicted to increase in importance with climate change, but its current vulnerability to red band needle blight means that its future role is very uncertain.
Austrian black pine (P. nigra ssp. nigra) shows greater tolerance of chalk and limestone, and also withstands exposure. However, it is not as vigorous as and has poorer form than Corsican pine and so would only be used in special situations.
Cookies are files saved on your phone, tablet or computer when you visit a website.
We use cookies to store information about how you use the dwi.gov.uk website, such as the pages you visit.
Find out more about cookies on forestresearch.gov.uk
We use 3 types of cookie. You can choose which cookies you're happy for us to use.
These essential cookies do things like remember your progress through a form. They always need to be on.
We use Google Analytics to measure how you use the website so we can improve it based on user needs. Google Analytics sets cookies that store anonymised information about: how you got to the site the pages you visit on forestresearch.gov.uk and how long you spend on each page what you click on while you're visiting the site
Some forestresearch.gov.uk pages may contain content from other sites, like YouTube or Flickr, which may set their own cookies. These sites are sometimes called ‘third party’ services. This tells us how many people are seeing the content and whether it’s useful.