Don't Forget the Birds

Is it a stone pine?

The trees the nutcrackers feed on are five-needle pines. Nearly everything else around Umeå is a two-needle pine. That one difference settles it.

Pull off one bundle and count the needles.

Needles grow in little sheathed bundles. Take one bundle between your fingers and count. Five means yes. Two means no. It takes three seconds and it is the only test that never lies.

In life

Stone pine · cembratall

Needles in bundles of five, 5 to 10 cm
Soft and floppy, not prickly. Straight, not twisted
Blue-green, with pale white lines on the inner faces, so the tuft looks silvered
Held in dense brushes at the branch ends

The shape from a distance

Dense, dark, foliage low down

Fat conical or columnar crown, often furred right down to the ground
Dark and solid looking, you cannot see much sky through it
Bark grey-brown and finely scaly. Never orange

In life

Scots pine · tall

Needles in pairs, 3 to 7 cm, stiff and clearly twisted
Sharper to the touch, greyish green
This is the ordinary wild Swedish pine. It seeds itself everywhere

Open irregular Scots pine with orange upper trunk

The shape from a distance

Open, gappy, orange above

Irregular crown with plenty of sky through it, bare lower trunk
Orange-brown bark on the upper trunk and branches. The clearest long-range tell
If you can see orange up in the tree, walk on

Quick comparison

If you only remember one row, make it the first.

Needles per bundle	Stone pine: five. Scots pine: two
Needle feel	Soft and limp, versus stiff and twisted
Needle length	5 to 10 cm, versus 3 to 7 cm
Upper bark	Grey-brown, versus orange
Crown	Dense and dark, versus open and gappy
Cones	Stubby barrels that sit upright and drop whole, versus small pointed woody cones that open

Not a pine at all

Two things people mix up with it.

Spruce · gran	Needles come off the twig singly, never in bundles. Short, stiff, four-sided, sharp. Cones hang down
Larch · lärk	Needles in soft rosettes of many, and it goes bare in winter

The other pines you will meet

Counts from Umeå kommun's own tree register, 3,628 pines in all. Only three of these species have five needles, and all three are ones you want.

Five needles
Sibirisk cembratall Pinus sibirica	121 · your main tree. Nutcracker food
Cembratall Pinus cembra	12 · the Alpine one. Same thing to a nutcracker
Makedonisk tall Pinus peuce	11 · also five needles, also edible seed. Worth logging
Two needles
Tall Pinus sylvestris	3,443 · ninety-five per cent of every pine here
Svarttall Pinus nigra	23 · very dark, long stiff needles. Can look right from a distance
Bergtall Pinus mugo	9 · low sprawling shrub, planted in beds
Ormskinnstall Pinus heldreichii	8 · pale flaking bark like snakeskin
Strandtall Pinus contorta	1 · short twisted needles, a forestry tree

Svarttall is the one most likely to fool you. It is dark and dense from a distance, much like a cembratall. Count the needles and it falls apart at once: two, and stiff enough to hurt.

A warning about searching online.
In English, "stone pine" nearly always means Pinus pinea, the Mediterranean umbrella pine that gives shop-bought pine nuts. Two needles, and it does not grow this far north. If you search that, everything you find will be the wrong tree. Search cembratall, Pinus cembra or Pinus sibirica instead.

Signs a nutcracker has been

Under the tree	Cones torn apart rather than nibbled, scales scattered on the ground
Wedged in bark	A cone jammed into a fork or crevice and hammered open
Overhead	A hoarse dry rattle. Dark brown bird, heavily white-spotted, white under the tail
When	Late July to September is the harvest. August is the peak by a distance

If you are still unsure, photograph a bundle of needles against your hand for scale and log the stop anyway. Mark it as one to check. It is easier to settle later from a photograph than to walk back.

Open the map