Contents
What are the main uses of Aleppo pine?
What is Aleppo pine used for?
Importance of Aleppo pine wood
Today Aleppo pine wood is considered a very twisted and very poor quality wood. This seems to respond to a historical reason: over-exploitation of forests in the past.
Aleppo pine, along with oak (Quercus robur), has been the most widely used since ancient times for the production of timber trees. Apart from the usual consumption in private households, this wood was already commonly used by the Carthaginians and Romans to build their boats. Natives from this area melted the metal with which they made their weapons with Alleppo pine wood.
Besides, this wood protected mine galleries of silver copper and lead, especially those located in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula.
The Arabs also used much wood of Aleppo pine for the production of wood and tar with which they built and sealed their boats.
During the Middle Ages, many oaks and pine trees were felled to get free land for agriculture and livestock, as well as for the production of charcoal. Not least important the great production of wood for building ships going to America during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The Industrial Revolution led to a new exploitation in the nineteenth century to use wood and coal as energy source, after the forest seemed to have recovered somewhat during the thirteenth century.
All this long process has led to overexploitation of pine forests, as, according to many historians, who have been reporting over the centuries, has practically decimated the soil where forests once grew splendidly.
In the twentieth century the quality of Aleppo pine forests was so low that, thereafter, its wood has only been used practically as a fuel or to produce wood of poor quality, suitable only for certain uses such as railway sleepers, scafolding or packaging. Thus, although abundant, as a consequence of this overexploitation, Aleppo pines usually do not provide good quality wood. Their place has been taken by others more suited to this task, as Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris)
Other uses of the Aleppo pine
- Aleppo pine for the production of resin: Resin is called a kind of Greek wine with denomination of origin made from wooden barrels sealed with resin of Aleppo pine.
The resin can isolate the wine from the air so as not to become soured and, at the same time, this method provides the characteristic bouquet of this wine.
Allepo pine resin was already known by the Romans and it is still well known and appreciated today.
- Medicinal: The antiseptic, mucolytic and expectorant properties of pine have been used in numerous respiratory diseases.
More information on pine nuts and pines
