ANZAC Day 2019

The story of the pine cones
After the battle, Lance Corporal Benjamin Charles
Smith, 3 rd Battalion, AIF, collected several pine cones
from the branches used to cover the trenches. This
was done in commemoration of his brother Mark,
who died on 6 August, and Smith sent the pine cones
home to his mother.
From one of these cones Smith’s mother sowed
several seeds and successfully raised two seedlings.
One was planted in Inverell, New South Wales,
where both her sons had enlisted. The other was
presented to the Australian War Memorial, to be
planted in its grounds in honour of her own and
others’ sons who fell at Lone Pine.
An Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis) propagated from
seeds collected from the Lone Pine tree planted in
the grounds of the Australian War Memorial,
Canberra, by HRH Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester,
on 24 October 1934.