Pinus quadrifolia
Pinus glabra
four-needle pinyon, nut pine, Parry pine, Parry pinyon, Parry pinyon pine, piñón, piñón de California
bottom white pine, cedar pine, spruce pine, Walter pine
red-brown, irregularly furrowed and cross-checked to irregularly rectangular, plates scaly.
gray, fissured and cross-checked into elongate, irregular, scaly plates, resin pockets absent, on upper sections of trunk ± smooth, gray, looking slick.
spreading to ascending, persistent to trunk base;
twigs slender, pale orange-brown, puberulent-glandular, aging brown to gray-brown.
whorled, spreading to ascending;
twigs slender, purple-red to red-brown, occasionally glaucous, aging gray, smooth.
ovoid, light red-brown, ca. 0.4–0.5cm, slightly resinous.
ovoid to ovoid-cylindric, red-brown, ca. 0.5–1cm, slightly resinous;
scale margins finely fringed.
(3–)4(–5) per fascicle, persisting 3–4 years, (2–)3–6cm × (1–)1.2–1.7mm, curved, connivent, stiff, green to blue-green, margins entire to minutely scaly-denticulate, finely serrulate, apex subulate, adaxial surfaces mostly strongly whitened with stomatal bands, abaxial surface not so but 2 subepidermal resin bands evident;
sheath 0.5–0.6cm, scales soon recurved, forming rosette, shed early.
2 per fascicle, spreading to ascending, persisting 2–3 years, 4–8(–10)cm × 0.7–1.2mm, straight, slightly twisted, dark green, all surfaces with fine stomatal lines, margins finely serrulate, apex sharply conic;
sheath 0.5–1cm, base persistent.
ovoid, ca. 10mm, yellowish.
lance-cylindric, 10–15mm, purple-brown.
cones maturing in 2 years, shedding seeds and falling soon thereafter, spreading, symmetric, ovoid before opening, broadly ovoid to depressed-globose when open, (3–)4–8(–10)cm, pale yellow-brown, sessile to short-stalked, apophyses thickened, strongly raised, diamond-shaped, transversely keeled, umbo subcentral, low-pyramidal or sunken, blunt.
cones maturing in 2 years, shedding seeds soon thereafter, semipersistent, spreading to recurved, nearly symmetric, lance-ovoid before opening, ovoid-cylindric when open, 3.5–7cm, red-brown, aging gray, nearly sessile or on stalks to 1cm, scales lacking contrasting border on adaxial surfaces (as in P. echinata);
apophyses but slightly thickened and raised;
umbo central, depressed, unarmed or with small, curved, weak, deciduous, short-incurved prickle.
=24.
Pinus quadrifolia
Pinus glabra
Pinus quadrifolia is the rarest pinyon in the flora. It hybridizes naturally with P. monophylla.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Pinus glabra is more shade tolerant than most yellow pines. Although the trees grow large, the wood is not much valued. The species is similar in tree form to P. strobus. It resembles P. echinata in shoot and leaf but has less prickly cones and deeper green leaves.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
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