TREES, PLEASE! Are You A Pine Nut?
- k-england
- Apr 1
- 4 min read
By Robin Y. Rivet, for Let’s Talk Plants! April 2025.
Are You a Pine Nut?
How many local pines can you identify?
What is the most commonly cultivated pine in California?
Canary Island pine: Pinus canariensis is one of the most fire-resistant trees in the world. When water is scarce, droplets cling to its long 3-needle bundles. Native to islands on a Mediterranean latitude of northern Africa, it’s the most common non-native pine in our county. Resilient and drought tough, these grow impressively tall (80’), while maintaining a narrow canopy width – often ¼ of its height. Skyline species are rare in San Diego, so this well-behaved urban gem makes a striking street tree. Identify this pine by its conical-columnar form and dark, deeply-fissured bark that often sprouts from epicormic buds along its trunk.
Which pine has the largest cones in the world? What about the longest?
Coulter pine: Pinus coulteri grows in San Diego’s higher elevations, with long, stiff bluish gray-green, 3-needle bundles. It produces the largest cones of any pine, weighing up to 10 lbs., each with armored claw-like scales.
Sugar pine: Pinus lambertiana once existed as an old-growth forest in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park where there is still a sugar pine trail, but most of it burned in the Cedar fire. These were massive and tall 5-needle pines; in fact, a specimen in Yosemite is considered the biggest pine in the world. Sugar pine cones aren’t as bulky as Coulter pine, but they are the longest - measuring up to 22” long.
What pine has the tastiest nuts? It’s likely a tie between US and European species.
Singleleaf pinyon pine: Pinus monophylla is a small-scale native CA pine, but its cones can produce large and tasty nuts. It’s the only true pine species with frosty-gray needles that are singly born.
Italian stone pine: Pinus pinea has 2-needles per fascicle, and develops an iconic, umbrella shape with rugged bark at maturity. These also have some of the tastiest pine nuts - if you are willing to capture the ripe cones before the birds get them.
Varying in sizes, some pine cones have prickles – while others do not. What’s a prickle?
Torrey pine: Pinus torreyana is unique in California for having long, gray-green 5-needle bundles, and sharp tooth-like prickles on their cones. Because of their scarcity, Torrey pine genetics suffers from inbreeding, and they’re susceptible to ecosystem changes, pests and disease, so helping them plant many new seedlings may help them adapt.
Ponderosa pine: Pinus ponderosa has dark-green 3-needle bundles, and is the most widely distributed native pine in western America, although in San Diego they are limited to our mountain regions. Their baseball-sized cones have conspicuous prickles - presumably to thwart predators from stealing their seeds, while the cracked, rusty-brown bark that forms puzzle-like shapes, is sweetly aromatic; exuding the scent of butterscotch or vanilla.
Aleppo pine: Pinus halepensis has lighter-green, 2-needle fascicles, and tolerates poor soil, pollution, and extremes of drought, heat, and salinity. Another Mediterranean import, Aleppo pines thrive on our freeways, with a characteristic, irregular spreading form and ascending branches. Their mature asymmetrical cones lack a prickle, but persist in the canopy, typically recurving backward on branches – a diagnostic feature.
Mondell pines: Pinus eldarica are related to Aleppo pines, but are distinguished by their more conical form, with similar mature cones lingering in the canopy, but instead they push outward - not backward on limbs.
Some pines need intense heat to split open their closed cones.
Monterey pine: Pinus radiata is grown locally on Christmas tree farms. Monterey has the dubious honor of being considered a CA native, but can be “invasive” in parts of the state. Once widely planted in San Diego, prolonged drought has been a death knell for many mature specimens. The species has 3-needles to their bundles (and sometimes just 2), and their lopsided closed-cones may pop open - simply from the heat on a very hot day, unlike the knobcone pine which truly needs fire to germinate.
What pine looks more like a weeping willow, than a typical pine?
Jelecote pine: Pinus patula is a hardy, native species from Mexico, although a few can be seen growing in Balboa Park on the central west mesa. Jelecote has extremely long, drooping 3-needle bundles, giving this pine a unique, weeping appearance.
Getting to know the types of pines you see every day can be a good start to identifying pines you encounter when you’re traveling out of town. And, with higher tariffs on imported Chinese goods, local US pine nuts may soon be worth the trouble to procure.
*Accurate Pinus spp. ID requires quite a bit of determination along with keen observational skills. It helps to utilize a dichotomous tree key - realizing imported species are seldom included in regional tree keys, so it’s extra-difficult in the urban regions of San Diego, where so many tree species have originated from other locales. Many local pines were not included in this essay.
