Photo: Vladlen Terezhe — CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Survives zone 2 through 7
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Siberian pine — called kedr (cedar) in Russia and a genuine source of national pride — produces the seeds pressed into prized Siberian 'cedar nut' oil, noted for one of the highest pinolenic acid contents of any pine nut; wild stands crop unpredictably, with a good harvest only about once every four years.
- Hardiness
- Zone 2–7
- Habit
- Tree
- Edible part
- Nut
- Ripens
- Autumn (cones)
- Mature size
- Tree 20–35 m — not containerable for cropping
- Light
- Full sun — cone/seed set needs sun
- Soil pH
- 5.0–7.0
- Environment
- Boreal
- Native range
- Siberia from the Ural Mountains east to the Stanovoy Range, north to the lower Yenisei valley and south into northern Mongolia and adjacent parts of Kazakhstan and China (Heilongjiang, Nei Mongol, Xinjiang), from near sea level in the north to 1,000–2,400 m farther south.
- Status
- Both wild and cultivated
- Years to fruit
- Good harvests roughly once every 4 years in mature wild stands; full natural bearing may take 100+ yrs, though cultivated or grafted trees can start much earlier.
- Growth speed
- Slow to moderate — about 30–70 cm of height per year.
- Spacing
- 700 cm (276 in) apart — about 49 m² (527 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Needles in fascicles of five, 8–12 cm long.
- Root system
- Well-developed taproot with strong, wide-spreading lateral roots; the deep taproot makes transplanting large specimens difficult, so containerized nursery stock is preferred.
- Fruit description
- Cones are 5–9 cm long; the seeds (9–12 mm, with only a vestigial wing) are the source of commercial Siberian 'cedar nuts' and cedar nut oil, and each cone holds 30–150 nuts.
- Propagation
- By seed, needing several months of cold, moist stratification (commonly treated much like the closely related P. cembra — warm stratification followed by cold); seedling growth is slow, so grafting is used to bring named or high-yielding selections into bearing much faster.
- Pollination
- Monoecious, wind-pollinated — plant more than one
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
Fertilizing. Undemanding of soil fertility — it copes with oxygen-poor, compacted, gravelly or even boggy ground — so established trees need no routine feeding; drainage tolerance matters more than nutrient levels.
Growing tips. A massive, long-lived tree (30–40 m tall, living 800+ years) that is extremely cold-hardy — down to -60°C — and wind tolerant, making it usable as an ornamental even in continental climates such as the Canadian prairies. Cones take about 2 years to mature, and a heavy nut harvest comes only about once every 4 years even in good stands; under natural conditions full commercial-scale yields aren't reached for 100+ years, though grafted or cultivated trees can begin cropping much sooner.
Companion planting. As a five-needle white pine it is a potential host for white pine blister rust, so the standard caution against planting Ribes (currants, gooseberries) nearby applies, though Siberian pine shows good natural resistance to the disease.
Grow journal
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