Japanese Red Pine vs Japanese Black Pine Toughness

[thumblessprimate1]

I'm going to be getting some Japanese red pine seedlings going. I'd like to know if the Japanese red pine is similarly tolerant of stress and dummies (LOL). Also I'd like to know if they can tolerate water the same way as JBP.

One of my faults is that I can't leave my plants alone, and thankfully Japanese black pines have proven to be very forgiving. A JBP I repotted late is stable and showing no signs of stress, and fortunately I have no itch to do anything else to for a while.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

The way I understand it, black pines are common in the coastal regions, red pines are in the dryer foothills, and white pines are in the higher elevations. I kind of equate them to our US natives like this:

black pine = loblolly pine
red pine = ponderosa pine or Virginia pine
white pine = bristlecone pine

Red pines need to be in drier soil than black pines. I really like everything about red pines except they're brittle, and I've killed every one I've owned except 2 seedlings. The 2 bigger ones I killed were from root rot, and I'm more convinced it was a bad combination of Brussel's soil and my watering habits than anything else.

In fact, one was in such bad soil that it actually did better sitting outside the pot as an exposed root ball for 6 months than it did sitting in a nursery can...but neither could tolerate the root work necessary to get that horrible soil out.

 

[Jason_mazzy]

Much agreed with Brian.