pine

Any coniferous tree of the genus Pinus, family Pinaceae. There are 70–100 species, of which about 35 are native to North America. These are generally divided into two groupings: the soft pines and the hard pines. The former have needles in bundles of five and stalked cones without prickles; for example, eastern white pine P. strobus. Hard pines usually have needles in bundles of two or three and prickly cones; for example, jack pine P. banksiana. The oldest living species is probably the bristlecone pine P. aristata, native to California, of which some specimens are said to be 4,600 years old.

A previously unknown pine was discovered at the bottom of a deep gorge in 1994, 125 mi/200 km outside Sydney, Australia. It is about 130 ft/40 m in height and has been given the popular name Wollemi. Only 40 trees were found. Botanists believe it may date back to prehistoric times, and belongs to a new genus of the Araucariaceae family. Australian scientists reported some success in germinating immature seeds from the Wollemi pine February in 1995.

Pine

E-mail program for Unix and MS-DOS. Pine grew out of Elm, an older Unix e-mailer, and includes online help and a user-friendly text editor called Pico.