Corteza Del Pino

Tree bark is really amazing stuff. November is a visual treat, a bouquet of brilliantly coloured foliage and fruit. A veritable cornucopia of colours and patterns. I am slightly obsessed with the variety and beauty of tree bark, by the fact that the smoothness of a sapling is no more beautiful than the ridges and folds in the bark of a mature tree. Am I loosing the plot?

Factoid: In 1837, during one of his exploratory visits to the south of the Iberian Peninsula, the Swiss Botanist Edmond Boisser discovered a new species of tree: Abies Pinsapo, popularly known as the pinsapo pine or Spanish fir.
The tree can grow up to 30m tall and live as long as 200 years. It has tiny needle-like leaves, which are extremely sharp and cylindrical in shape, and although this foliage appears lightweight, it throws out a very dense shade on the ground.
Found only in the southern mountains of Andalucia and in the north of Morocco, botanists discovered that the pinsapo had been around since the Tertiary geological time period - before the Ice Age! How could it have survived?