This pic is of one of the most mysterious plants in my entire collection. I truly haven't a clue where it came from - I suppose with, at times in the past 15 years, up to 200 plants in pots to keep track of, this sort of thing can happen in spite of trying to use labels and spreadsheets. It's funny that, even going back to the late 1990s, I see notes on plants I supposedly purchased and think "I don't remember that at all", even if I remember 97% of the rest! A couple just went into some kind of mental black hole for some reason! It was possibly a contaminant seed in the first batch of Larix principis-rupprechtii I tried to grow back in mid-2010s...alas nothing else came of that, the few seeds I remember germinating got damping off. It took until another round a few years ago for me to be successful with raising them: I now have seedlings that I'm 100% sure are larches. Much less likely possibility - but I can't rule it out: it was a Pinus seedling I spotted, either in my garden *or somewhere else during my travels* and potted up. Oh well. It's a 5 needled pine that resembles Pinus strobus, but there's no way in heck I would have knowingly propagated one of those. Doesn't it look like it is already starting to show weeping needles? I'm hoping it could be a P. wallichiana. And maybe I had spotted one around 2016, found a seedling under it, and managed to save the seedling. I definitely hadn't seen the exceptional P. wallichiana of Bucks County, PA, that I posted about previously, at that time...but they are at least somewhat common as ornamentals in SE PA. Googling for the original Gardenweb thread where I discussed the seeming mix-up about 5 years ago, I found this. Most amusing: https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/comments/1gr8y5k/landowner_david_hampton_planted_larch_pines_in_a/
Can you get a really close-up macro pic of the shoots, to see if they are glabrous or at all pubescent? That'll help to identify it. If I were to make a guess on what's visible in this pic, I would go for Pinus × schwerinii (the hybrid between P. strobus and P. wallichiana).
Michael, I finally scrounged up an extension tube set for my good camera. Hope these pics are helpful for your final verdict. Thanks in advance!
Thanks! Can you get a similar pic from a little further down the shoot of one of the side shoots, between the needles, rather than of the bud? Try to get the shoot, rather than the needles, in best focus.
