"Trees
weave the wind
and roses dye it
with perfumes."
Federico García Lorca.
We have frequently read and heard that the pinsapo fir only grows in the Sierra del Pinar de Grazalema and in some places in the Soviet Union, which we believe constitutes at least a botanical error.
The pinsapo (from Latin, pinus, pine and sapinus, sapino or fir) was botanically described by the Swiss aristocrat Boissier on his trip through Andalusia, to whom he gave the scientific names Abies pinsapo and Pinus pinsapo, the latter thinking of Linnaeus' classification. The fact that Boissier was the first to give it a scientific name does not mean that the pinsapo was not known by an important portion of Spaniards, including some top scientists, such as Herrera who cites it several times and Simón Rojas Clemente, who traveled and studied the pinsapo area, and thanks to him, some pharmacists from Malaga knew it, including Prolongo, who communicated it to Boissier.
In the scale of taxonomic categories used in the plant kingdom, Abies pinsapo Boiss., is a species of the genus Abies (firs), subfamily Abietoideas, family Pinaceae, order Coniferales (Conifers), class Coniferopsida, subtype Gymnosperms, type Spermatophytes or Phanerogams.
Fir trees tend to live together and therefore hybridize easily, complicating their identification as the true species rarely occurs. Currently, 55 species of the genus Abies have been described, of which 33 can be admitted as strong or first-class species, while the remaining 22 should be considered as secondary or perhaps as subspecies or geographical forms of the former. The European or circum-Mediterranean firs are: Abies alba (Pyrenees, Vosges, Jura, Alps, Carpathians), with the subspecies Abies nebrodensis (Corsica), Abies nordmanniana (Caucasus), Abies cephalónica (Balkans), Abies silícica (Turkey, Syria), Abies numídica (North Africa) and Abies pinsapo (Cádiz and Málaga) with the subspecies or geographical variety Abies marocana (North Africa) and among the Asian firs we find, Abies sibírica (Siberia) and Abies Webbiana (Himalayas).
Of the firs, there are only two Spanish species, Abies alba Mill., Abies pectinata D.C., Pinus picea L. or Pinus abies Durci., scientific names of the one commonly known as "pinabete", "white fir" and in Catalan "pibet" or "pinabet", and Abies pinsapo Boiss. or Pinus pinsapo Boiss., while the former is spread throughout the mountains of Europe, mainly in the central and southern systems, the pinsapo in the wild occurs exclusively in Spain, since Abies marocana is considered a geographical variety of Morocco.
The pinsapo is found in the Penibética, in the Serranía de Ronda, distributed in three massifs: Sierra de las Nieves, within the terms of Tolox, Yunquera and Ronda; Sierra de los Reales de Genaguacil or Sierra Bermeja in Estepona and already within Cádiz in the Sierra del Pinar in Grazalema.
Although conifers are generally trees with persistent leaves, they logically have a limited duration on the plant, varying greatly from one species to another, the pinsapo with a duration of the leaves (needles) of up to 15 years, comes to be placed in the highest place on the scale of life of the leaves.
The pinsapo has good wood and as for its decorative value, the beauty of the landscapes defined by these trees is undeniable.
Cádiz and Málaga and with them, Andalusia and Spain must feel proud to have the pinsapos in their soil. And, as Federico García Lorca said: "When I was a child, my poor grandmother told me one day that when I died I would go on the tenderest leaves of the highest trees."
Francisco Arias Solis
