Aleppo Pine
On 24 October 1934, HRH Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, planted a small Aleppo Pine in the grounds of the Australian War Memorial. He decorated it with a wreath of red poppies he had brought with him.
At that time, only the AWM’s foundations had been built. The tree was surrounded by an almost empty paddock and came to be known as the Lone Pine.
Shortly after the ceremony, a severe thunderstorm hit the area. The storm washed away a bridge over the Molonglo River, but the sapling stood firm.
In December 2008, the tree received Australia-wide media coverage when another severe storm caused a large branch to fall. Fortunately, the tree survived.
A plaque on the low wrought-iron fence around the tree reads:
After the capture of the Lone Pine ridge in Gallipoli (6 August 1915), an Australian Soldier who had taken part in the attack, in which his brother was killed, found a cone on one of the branches used by the Turks as overhead cover for their trenches, and sent it to his mother. From seed shed by it she raised the tree, which she presented to be planted in the War Memorial grounds in honour of her own and others' sons who fell at Lone Pine.
This tree was propagated from a seed of the AWM’s Lone Pine and donated to the SAS Historical Foundation