Today, 25th April, is the 110th anniversary of the first military action seen by Australian and New Zealand troops on this day 1915. The ANZACs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) suffered heavy casualties when they landed on the Gallipoli peninsula, then part of the Ottoman Empire and now part of Turkey.

Australia was but 14 years old, having federated on 1st January 1901. New Zealand had chosen not to join this federation, but became a Dominion in 1907. (New Zealand never had an official independence day, but full sovereignty evolved slowly over decades, with full sovereignty dating to 1947, and complete and unlimited sovereign power dating to 1987.)

Anzac Day is observed by Australia, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Cook Islands, New Zealand, Niue, Norfolk Island, Tokelau and Tonga.

My great-grandfather, Edgar Francis Douglas, of the 3rd Light Horse Regiment, Australian Imperial Force, was wounded at Gallipoli on 15th June 1915. His regiment first fought in Egypt from December 1914 to May 1915, and arrived at Gallipoli on 12th May 1915.

That following August 1915 was the Battle of Lone Pine, between the ANZAC and Ottoman Empire forces. The name came from a single Turkish or Calabrian Pine (Pinus brutia) left standing, prior to the battle, of a stand which had been cut down by the Turks to construct trenches. That lone tree eventually succumbed to shelling.

A cone from The Lone Pine was collected by an Australian soldier, Private Thomas Keith McDowell, and brought back to Australia, where his aunt Emma Gray successfully grew four seedlings. These seedlings were later planted in four locations in Victoria in the early 1930s. The rest of the story, with photos, can be read here.

Another soldier, Lance Corporal Benjamin Smith, sent home cones from the branches covering the Turkish trenches, from which his mother grew two seedlings. These trees are from the Aleppo Pine (Pinus halepensis), and that story can be read here.

The Turkish (Pinus brutia) and Aleppo pine are closely related, and Pinus brutia was once and still is considered a subspecies of Pinus halepensis by some botanists. The two form a species complex, a group of species so closely related that it can be extremely difficult to distinguish them based on visible features, and deeper microscopy work or genetic analysis is sometimes required.

This confusion may explain the Australian War Memorial selling seedling descendants of Benjamin Smith’s cones it calls both Aleppo pines and Lone Pine seedlings. But naming confusion aside, it is still a shame that they don’t sell descendants of the Lone Pine cone itself as well, whether called Aleppo or Turkish.

There is a descendant of one of them at the Wollongong Botanic Garden! The plaque says this:

Here are several photos of it from different perspectives:

Lest We Forget.