Dotting the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada: nut pine (Pinus monophylla), an important food-tree

The nut pine (Pinus monophylla), commonly named singleleaf pinyon (also written single-leaf pinyon and singleleaf piñon), is a small evergreen tree with one to two inches long single needles (its name!)—rarely two or three needles in a fascicle. Trees grow up to a height of 40 feet, often with several twisted trunks, branching low and into a broad crown [1]. It is native to North America, having a distribution range from Idaho to Baja California [2]. John Muir mentioned its scattered occurrence along the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada, where it grows in “grayish, bush-like patches, from the margin of the sage-plain to an elevation of from 7000 to 8000 feet” [3]. Often mixed with junipers, the nut pine is a significant member of the pinyon-juniper woodland community.

The edible seeds of the nut pine—the pine nuts—have been collected as a diet by Native Americans for a long time. The nuts have a relatively high water content and a moderate fat content. Their nutritional value may be accessed by comparing percentages-by-weight content of water, protein, fat, fiber and carbohydrates for Pinus monophylla nuts with respective percentages for other pine nuts and acorns [4].

Back to John Muir, who described the cones with their seeds, so important to Native American tribes [3]:

The cones are green while growing, and are usually found over all the tree, forming quite a marked feature as seen against the bluish-gray foliage. They are quite small, only about two inches in length, and give no promise of edible nuts; bu when we come to open them, we find that about half the entire bulk of the cone is made up of sweet, nutritious seeds, the kernels of which are nearly as large as those of hazel-nuts.

This is undoubtedly the most important food-tree on the Sierra, and furnishes the Mono, Carson, and Walker River Indians with more and better nuts than all the other species taken together. It is the Indians' own tree, and many a white man have they killed for cutting it down. 

John Muir, 1894.

Keywords: conifers, Pinales, Pinaceae, ethnobotany, food source, natural history.

References and more to explore

[1] VirginiaTech, Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation: singleleaf pinyon [dendro.cnre.vt.edu/dendrology/syllabus2/factsheet.cfm?ID=667 ].
[2] The Gymnosperm Database: Pinus monophylla - Torrey et Frémont 1845 [www.conifers.org/pi/Pinus_monophylla.php].
[3] John Muir: The Mountains of California. The Century Company, New York, 1894. Note: see pages 154 to 156 in the Penguin Classics Book print of 1985 with an introduction by Edward Hoagland.
[4] Glenn J. Farris: A Reassessment of the Nutritional Value of Pinus monophylla. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropolgy 1980, 2 (1), pp. 132-136 [www.escholarship.org/uc/item/7t65h419#page-1].

Accompanying the dwarf pine in some Sierra locations: needle pine (Pinus aristata)

Pinus aristata tassel, Wilbur D. May Arboretum

Pinus aristata is currently grouped into the subgenus Ducampopinus (bristlecone pines, lacebark pines, pinyons), within the genus Pinus, based on cone, seed and leaf characters [1-3]: known under the common name Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine, Pinus aristata is closely related to the Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) and the foxtail pine (Pinus balfouriana) within the subsection Balfourianae (foxtail pines). These are mountain pines, growing at high elevation in the Rocky Mountains and Great Basin ranges. Pinus aristata's present distribution range includes the states of Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona [4,5].

Interestingly, John Muir writes about the occurrence of Pinus aristata, to which he refers with the common name needle pine, in the Sierra Nevada, California—restricted to the area of the Kings and Kern river headwaters in the southern portion of the range. Muir says that the needle pine forms extensive forests there, accompanying the dwarf pine in some of these high-altitude places near the limit of tree growth [6]:

It is first met at an elevation of between 9000 and 10,000 feet, and runs up to 11,000 without seeming to suffer greatly from the climate or the leanness of the soil. It is a much finer tree than the Dwarf Pine. Instead of growing in clumps and low, heathy mats, it manages in some way to maintain an erect position, and usually stands single. Wherever the young trees are at all sheltered, they grow up straight and arrowy, with delicately tapered bole, and ascending branches terminated with glossy bottle-brush tassels. 

John Muir, 1894.

The above picture shows a Pinus aristata tassel of a bristlecone pine tree planted and sheltered in the Wilbur D. May Arboretum and Botanical Garden in Reno, Washoe County, Nevada—with an elevation of about 4,500 feet (1,370 m) a high-desert location, but situated much lower than typical habitats of bristlecone trees.

Keywords: conifers, Pinales, Pinaceae, section Parrya, taxonomy, natural history.

References and more to explore

[1] Encyclopedia of Life: Ducampopinus [http://eol.org/pages/6066156/overview].
[2] ArunPrasat26: Pinus classification. Blogger, September 1, 2007 [pinusclassification126.blogspot.com/2007/09/pinus-classification.html].
[3] Tree Names: Pine Tree Species Names Classification of the Pinus Genus [www.treenames.net/ti/pinus/].
[4] USDA: Pinus aristata Engelm. [plants.usda.gov/core/profile?symbol=PIAR].
[5] F. Craig Brunstein and David K. Yamaguchi: The Oldest Known Rocky Mountain Bristlecone Pines (Pinus aristata Engelm.). Arctic and Alpine Research, Aug 1992, 24 (3), pp. 253-256 [www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1551666?uid=3739824&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102555148303].
[6] John Muir: The Mountains of California. The Century Company, New York, 1894. Note: see pages 152 to 154 in the Penguin Classics Book print of 1985 with an introduction by Edward Hoagland.

Sparsely scattered in the Sierra Nevada: white pine (Pinus flexilis)

The white pine (Pinus flexilis), like the dwarf pine, grows at high elevation, typically above 9,000 feet above the sea [1]. The name “white pine” also refers to a subgenus within the genus Pinus: subgenus Strobus, commonly named white pines or soft pines [2]. Therefore, Pinus flexilis is often called by the common name limber pine or by geographically enhanced terms such as Rocky Mountain white pine [3]. The latter name hints at its main distribution range—the Rocky Mountains from Canada to Mexico. Pinus flexilis is also found in the Great Basin and the eastern Sierra Nevada [1]:

This species is widely distributed throughout the Rocky Mountains, and over all the higher of the many ranges of the Great Basin, between the Wahsatch Mountains and the Sierra, where it is known as White Pine. In the Sierra it is sparsely scattered along the eastern flank, from Bloody Cañon southward nearly to the extremity of the range, opposite the village of Lone Pine, nowhere forming any appreciable portion of the general forest. From its peculiar position, in loose, straggling parties, it seems to have been derived from the Basin ranges to the eastward, where it is abundant.

John Muir, 1894.

Note: Now spelled “Wasatch,” the spelling “Wahsatch” was used during John Muir's time. See, for example, the title “Salt Lake City and Wahsatch Mountains” of a book published in 1869 [4].

Keywords: conifers, Pinales, Pinaceae, scientific classification, natural history.

References and more to explore

[1] John Muir: The Mountains of California. The Century Company, New York, 1894. Note: see page 152  in the Penguin Classics Book print of 1985 with an introduction by Edward Hoagland.
[2] The Gymnosperm Database: Pinus [www.conifers.org/pi/Pinus.php].
[3] The Gymnosperm Database: Pinus flexilis [www.conifers.org/pi/Pinus_flexilis.php].
[4] Salt Lake City and Wahsatch Mountains [www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004680326/].

Creeping at high altitude: dwarf pine (Pinus albicaulis)

The dwarf pine (Pinus albicaulis) occurs at high elevation— together with the tamarack pine (Pinus contorta) up to a height of 9,500 feet—and often by itself up to 12,000 feet. This pine, also named whitebark pine, is a key species and vital evergreen of high-altitude forest communities of western North America [1]. The extreme, almost alpine conditions, under which trees survive in those exposed locations, find their expression in the bowing, asymmetric or contorted tree sculptures; illustrated by the hemlock spruce (Tsuga mertensiana) and the Sierra juniper (Juniperus occidentalis). John Muir introduced the dwarf pine—found as a group of erect trees at lower elevation and as closer to the ground growing “dwarfs” at higher, frequently exposed sites—as follows [2]:

This species forms the extreme edge of the timber line throughout nearly the whole extent of the range on both flanks [of the Sierra Nevada]. It is first met growing in company with Pinus contorta, var. Murrayama, on the upper margin of the belt, as an erect tree from fifteen to thirty feet high and from one to two feet in thickness; thence it goes straggling up the flanks of the summit peaks, upon moraines or crumbling ledges, wherever it can obtain a foothold, to an elevation of from 10,000 to 12,000 feet, where it dwarfs to a mass of crumpled, prostrate branches, covered with slender, upright shoots, each tipped with a short, close-packed tassel of leaves.

John Muir, 1894.

Often occurring as krummholz, the dwarf pine is also called scrub pine or creeping pine. Small trees of this pine species served Muir as a sheltered campsite, where, during stormy nights, he “often camped snugly beneath the interlacing arches of this little pine. The needles, which have accumulated for centuries, make fine beds, a fact well known to other mountaineers, such as deer and wild sheep, who paw out oval hollows and lie beneath the larger trees in safe and comfortable concealment.” [2]

Keywords: conifers, Pinales, Pinaceae, natural history, Sierra Nevada.

References and more to explore

[1] Even Reed Larson: Status and Dynamics of Whitebark Pine (Pinus albicaulis Engelm.) Forests in Southwest Montana, Central Idaho, and Oregon, U.S.A. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, June 2009 [www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5341426.pdf].
[2] John Muir: The Mountains of California. The Century Company, New York, 1894. Note: see pages 149 to 152  in the Penguin Classics Book print of 1985 with an introduction by Edward Hoagland.