Scots pine

The heroine of Shishkin’s painting “Morning in a Pine Forest” – the pine grows on sandy riverbanks from the Baltic to Yakutia.

The Scots pine is a conifer growing to 35–40 m, with orange-red, flaking bark on the upper trunk and stiff, blue-green needles in pairs. It is a light-demanding and very undemanding species – it grows both on dry sands and dunes and on peat bogs, where it takes on dwarf forms. It has one of the largest ranges of any conifer in the world, stretching from Scotland and Spain to eastern Siberia. Its resinous wood is prized in building, and its resin is made into rosin and turpentine.

Significance in the country

The pine is one of Russia’s main forest-forming trees, and its bright pinewoods – from the forests around Moscow to the ribbon pine forests of Altai Krai – are a recurring motif in Russian painting and poetry. The painting “Morning in a Pine Forest” by Ivan Shishkin and Konstantin Savitsky, with its bear cubs, even made it onto the wrappers of the popular “Mishka kosolapy” sweets.

Where it grows

Across almost the entire forest zone – from Kaliningrad Oblast and Karelia through the Volga region and the Urals to Siberia, Transbaikalia and Yakutia; in the south it forms island pinewoods on riverside sands, including the ribbon pine forests of Altai Krai.

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