Common Names

Piñon (Elmore & Janish 1976); New Mexican, Colorado, mesa, two-leaved, or common piñon (or pinyon) pine (Peattie 1950); pinón (Kral 1993).

Taxonomic notes

Subsection Cembroides (Perry 1991). Syn: P. monophylla var. edulis (Silba 1986), Caryopitys edulis (Engelmann) Small, P. cembroides Zuccarini var. edulis (Engelmann) Voss (Kral 1993).
Pinus edulis var. fallax Little (P.californiarum subsp. fallax (Little) D.K.Bailey) appears to combine features of P. edulis and P. monophylla. More study is needed (Kral 1993).

Description

Shrubs or trees typically to 21 m tall and 60 cm dbh, strongly tapering, erect; crown conic, rounded, dense. Bark red-brown, shallowly and irregularly furrowed, ridges scaly, rounded. Branches persistent to near trunk base; twigs pale red-brown to tan, rarely glaucous, aging gray-brown to gray, glabrous to papillose-puberulent. Buds ovoid to ellipsoid, red-brown, 0.5-1 cm, resinous. Leaves (1-)2(-3) per fascicle, upcurved, persisting 4-6 years, 20-40 × (0.9-)1-1.5 mm, connivent, 2-sided (1-leaved fascicles with leaves 2-grooved, 3-leaved fascicles with leaves 3-sided), blue-green, all surfaces marked with pale stomatal bands, particularly the adaxial, margins entire or finely serrulate, apex narrowly acute to subulate; sheath 0.5-0.7 cm, scales soon recurved, forming rosette, shed early. Pollen cones ellipsoid, ca. 7 mm, yellowish to red-brown. Seed cones maturing in 2 years, shedding seeds and falling soon thereafter, spreading, symmetric, ovoid before opening, depressed-ovoid to nearly globose when open, ca. (3.5)4(-5) cm, pale yellow- to pale red-brown, resinous, nearly sessile to short-stalked; apophyses thickened, raised, angulate; umbo subcentral, slightly raised or depressed, truncate or umbilicate. As with other piñons, the seeds rest in a deep cone-scale declivity and upper cone scale tissue holds the seeds in place, so seeds do not readily fall out and are readily available to avian dispersers. Seeds mostly ellipsoid to obovoid; body 10-15 mm, brown, wingless. 2 n=24 (Kral 1993, Ronald M. Lanner e-mail 20-Dec-1999).

Range

USA: California, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas at 1200 to 2450 m and Mexico: Chihuahua at 1500-2100(2700) m. Found on dry mountain slopes, mesas, plateaus, and (of course) in piñon-juniper woodland (Kral 1993). You can download a high-quality species distribution map at http://www.usgs.nau.edu/global_change/RangeMaps.html (link checked 2006.03.30). See also Thompson et al. (1999).

Big Tree

Diameter 172 cm, height 21 m, crown spread 16 m. Locality: Cuba, New Mexico (American Forests 1996).

Oldest

A crossdated age of 973 years from sample SUNB2522, collected in NE Utah by Schulman in 1956 (Brown 1996).

Dendrochronology

Ethnobotany

The seeds of this, the commonest southwestern United States piñon, are much eaten and traded by Native Americans (Kral 1993).

Observations

Easily found in most of its range, e.g., Big Bend National Park (Texas).

Remarks

Piñon (Pinus edulis) is the state tree of New Mexico (Kral 1993).

See Also

Burns and Honkala (1990).

Elias (1987).

Lanner (1981).

Little (1980).

FEIS database.