PINYON, PIGMY OF THE PINES

BY NATT N. DODGE PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR Although the range of the Pinyon Pine is by no means limited to Arizona, the Cactus State is the only one in which the three species of this pint-size conifer are found in abundance. Nevada's state tree, the Singleleaf Pinyon, invades Arizona from the northwest. The Colorado Pinyon, state tree of New Mexico, covers mesalands and foothills over much of the eastern half of Arizona. The Mexican Pinyon, common throughout the mountainous portions of southwestern Texas, Sonora, Chihuahua, and Coahuila, clothes the foothills of southeastern Arizona's desert ranges.

Because it is so common, so unspectacular, and so apparently useless, little attention is given the mundane pinyon; yet it has been a major factor in the early settlement and developing of the Southwest. During the centuries preceding the invasion of Europeans, spearheaded by Coronado, prehistoric Indians built an amazing civilization here. For untold generations, pinyon wood furnished fuel for their fires, timbers for their dwellings, easily stored nuts for winter nourishment, and provided food, shelter, and habitat for the game animals on which they relied for a large part of their sustenance. Better fitted because of metal tools, firearms, beasts of burden, and contact with the outside world to cope with an arid and inhospitable wilderness than were the Indians, the early Spanish settlers, too, relied heavily upon the ubiquitous pinyon for fuel, for its nutritious nuts, for building materials, and for the deer, turkeys, rabbits, and other animals that found food and shelter among the far-flung pigmy forests of the mesalands. Even today, the patient burro, sagging under a rounded load of pinyon fagots, remains the symbol of SpanishAmerican settlers whose subsistence farms and adobe villages became the objectives of the Santa Fe Trail and, later, the roads of steel. Indians had a name for it, but it was the Spaniards, according to G. H. Collingwood (author of "Knowing Your Trees"), who gave the tree the name "piñon." It was Cabeza de Vaca, first European to enter the Southwest, who described it in 1536. Pronounced PIN-yon by most Southwesterners, Spanish-Americans call the trees peen-YOHNS or peen-YO-nees. By association, the name is applied also to the large, crestless, dark blue jays that range in noisy flocks through the pinyon forests, and likewise to the nuts which are borne in the trees' cones.

was Cabeza de Vaca, first European to enter the Southwest, who described it in 1536. Pronounced PIN-yon by most Southwesterners, Spanish-Americans call the trees peen-YOHNS or peen-YO-nees. By association, the name is applied also to the large, crestless, dark blue jays that range in noisy flocks through the pinyon forests, and likewise to the nuts which are borne in the trees' cones.

Among the non-cultivated nut trees of the United States, the pinyon ranks first in commercial value of the seeds. For four decades the annual pinyon nut harvest has averaged more than a million pounds, with the record, in 1936, of approximately eight million pounds. Heavy yields, up to 300 pounds per acre, occur at two to five year intervals. Good crops are spotty and usually at widely separate localities. Rodents, pinyon jays, wild turkeys, and other animals compete with the Indians in harvesting the nuts. Navajos gather much of the crop, which they sell to dealers or barter for coffee, sugar, yard goods, or other staples at isolated trading posts on the reservation or nearby towns. In general, the nuts are gathered laboriously by hand from beneath the trees after they have fallen or been shaken from the ripe cones in September or early October. Villagers in the pinyon belt go afield to gather the nuts on their hands and knees or to knock them with sticks from the cone scales. Wood rat nests are sometimes robbed of stored nuts, and one ingenious farmer attempted, unsuccessfully, to harvest pinyon nuts with a bean thrasher. In Nevada, where the Singleleaf Pinyon is widespread, green cones are gathered in summer and stockpiled. Application of heat causes the cones to open and the nuts fall out.All species of pinyon produce edible nuts, but those of the Colorado Pinyon are most widely harvested. Commercial dealers obtain the nuts either direct from the gatherers or from trading posts, and ship them raw or roasted, shelled or unshelled, to New York markets. Many of the nuts are shelled by machinery, the small white kernels being used in candy making. Nuts of the Colorado Pinyon are medium size (one-half to three-

RANGE OF THE PINYON PINE

fourths inch) with oily kernels which may become rancid if not roasted. Shells are thin and readily cracked with the teeth. Prices range from 25 cents to 60 cents per pound paid to the harvesters, the retail selling price being from $1.50 to $2.50 per pound of unshelled nuts. Singleleaf Pinyon nuts, also thin shelled, are slightly larger than those of the commoner two-needled species, with mealy rather than oily kernels. Nuts of the threeneedled Mexican Pinyon have thick shells that cannot be cracked with the teeth, hence find practically no commercial demand although they are gathered and used locally.

According to the U. S. Forest Service, pinyon trees cover approximately 25 million acres, or 17 percent, of land in Arizona and New Mexico, and are widespread in Nevada, Utah, Colorado, southwestern Texas, and northern Mexico. In general they find suitable conditions between 5,000 and 7,500 feet elevations where annual precipitation ranges from 12 to 18 inches and temperatures from 110 to minus 25 degrees F. They are known to occur as low as 4,000 feet and as high as 9,000 feet. They are usually associated with the junipers, Gambel oak, mountain mahogany, cliff rose, serviceberry, and sometimes with sagebrush. Although shallow rooted, they are wind resistant, and seem to prefer gravelly or rocky soils. They are among the first trees to obtain a foothold on old lava flows. Where precipitation is light, stands are open, whereas under conditions of greater moisture, as on the Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado, the growth is dense and luxuriant.

Pinyon trees are usually small, from 15 to 25 feet in height, but occasional specimens have been found that are 50 feet high with trunks 12 to 30 inches in diameter. Pinyons are usually short trunked, rarely straight, with horizontal branches often twisted and gnarled, and open crowns. Mature stands, at a distance, resemble old apple orchards. Trees grow slowly (about one-half inch added to the diameter in a decade) and reach an age of 150 to 375 years. An over-mature grove of pinyons on the south rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison in southwestern Colorado has been of especial interest to scientists because a study of their growth rings showed that a number of the trees ranged in age from 550 to 750 years. Among them was a tree that had been 300 years old when Columbus reached the shores of North America. Another grove of pinyons, 14 miles northwest of Ft. Collins, Colorado, appears to be an isolated "island" 150 miles from any other pinyons. Of interest is the fact that it contains 18 species of mam-mals and 57 species of birds commonly found in the pinyon woodlands of the Southwest. Pinyon wood, which is heavy, soft, weak, brittle, grainy, and resinous, makes excellent firewood, especially for fireplaces. Commercial woodyards still flourish, in the face of competition from coal, gas, and fuel oil, in many towns and cities in the pinyon belt. The smoke is pungent with a pleasing fragrance. Pinyon incense, which burns with the same odor, is made from the pulverized cones. Candles, scented with pinyon, also are on the market.

Unfit for lumber, pinyon wood was at one time used for fence posts, corral posts, mine props, and rail-road ties, as well as in the manufacture of charcoal. Unless treated, it is not durable in contact with the soil.

Pinyon leaves or “needles,” are slightly curved, dark yellowish green, one to two-and-a-half inches in length, and remain on the trees from three to eight years. Male and female blossoms, which are borne on the same tree, appear in the spring. The small, egg-shaped cones require about 16 months to mature, ripening in August or September of the second year. They contain from two to 30 seeds or nuts which form in pockets at the bases of cone scales. Weevils often enter the nuts, destroying the kernels before the cones open. The most destructive enemy of the little pines is the Pinyon Blister Rust, whose alternate host is a wild cur-rant. Parasitic mistletoe, porcupines, leptographium root fungus, sawflies, needle miners, forest fires, and bark beetles are among the enemies that threaten the pinyon forests. The latter reached epidemic conditions in north-ern New Mexico during 1953, possibly as the result of the weakening of large areas of trees due to prolonged drouth, causing consternation among residents of Santa Fe and other towns and cities who watched helpless while choice pinyons in their landscape plantings turned brown and died. Excessive grazing destroys pinyon seedlings, paving the way for serious damage to ground cover and accelerated erosion. Pinyon lands are best suited to winter grazing. Although strictly a Southwest native, and the most drouthresistant and slow-growing of the pines, the pinyon has been successfully transplanted to the eastern part of the United States, where it has done well as a hardy, bushy evergreen in landscape plantings as far north as Massachusetts. It is still the traditional Christ-mas tree of the Spanish-Americans of the Southwest.

The scrubby, unspectacular pinyon has been aiding mankind in a quiet, unostentatious way through the centuries. Providing food, warmth, and building materials for the prehistoric Indians, it furnished pitch to make their basketry watertight and to cement turquoise in their inlaid jewelry. Its woodlands gave food and shelter to many species of birds and mammals which formed a vital part of the Indians' economy. For the Spanish settlers, it provided, in addition, fence and corral posts, mine props, railroad ties, and charcoal. It is just as essential in the modern economy of the Southwest, although in a more subtle and less evident manner. Its fragrant firewood and its delicious nuts add to our pleasure if not to our lifespan, and in so doing help to provide a livelihood for many marginal workers. Its woodlands protect extensive grazing lands from erosion, guard vital watersheds, and, as a fall and winter home for deer and wild turkeys, give invaluable recreation to thousands of hunters, sportsmen, and campers.

The deep green mantle of pinyon woodlands softens otherwise harsh landscapes and drapes a garment of verdure over sunbaked mesas and rugged canyon walls. In winter, its sweet nuts and fragrant incense awaken thoughts of turquoise skies and summer breezes sweeping across sunwashed slopes. Thus the pinyon becomes a potent factor in bringing travelers again and again to the Southwest, helping to maintain one of the region's major industries, the tourist business. It is little wonder that those who have given serious thought to the part that the pigmy pinyon pine plays in the past, present, and future of Arizona and the Southwest have become, shall we say, opinionated?