Pinus quadrifolia description

Pinus quadrifolia Parlatore ex Sudworth 1897

Common Names

Parry piñon, piñon (2); four-leaved nut pine, Parry's nut pine (3); Sierra Juárez piñon (4).

Taxonomic notes

Subsection Cembroides (7). Syn: P. cembroides var. quadrifolia (1); Pinus cembroides var. parryana Voss, P. juarezensis Lanner, P. parryana Engelmann 1862 not Gordon 1858 (9).

Lanner regards the P. quadrifolia populations described for the Sierra Juárez as juarezensis × monophylla hybrids and segregates P. juarezensis as a 5-needle piñon endemic to the Sierra Juárez of Baja California Norte and extreme S CA (4, 5, 10). Others regard P. juarezensis as a synonym for P. quadrifolia (1). The most recent sources (7, 9) accept that juarezensis × monophylla hybrids occur, but retain the taxon P. quadrifolia described here, although I do not find that Lanner's points have been effectively refuted.

Description

Trees or shrubs to 5-9(10) m tall and 30-50 cm in diameter, straight, much branched; crown dense, becoming rounded. Bark light grey and smooth, becoming red-brown, irregularly furrowed and cross-checked to irregularly rectangular, plates scaly. Branches spreading to ascending, persistent to trunk base; twigs slender, pale orange-brown, puberulent-glandular, aging brown to gray-brown. Buds ovoid, light red-brown, ca. 0.4-0.5 cm, slightly resinous. Needles (3)4(5) per fascicle, persisting 3-4 years, (2)3-6 cm × (1-)1.2-1.7 mm, curved, connivent, stiff, sharp, 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 0.5-0.6 cm, scales soon recurved, forming rosette, shed early. Staminate cones ovoid, ca. 10 mm, yellowish. Ovulate 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. Seeds obovoid, body ca. 15 mm, brown, wingless (8, 9).

Range

USA: S California; Mexico: Baja California Norte (1) at 1200-1800 m on dry gravelly slopes of foothills and mountains, in woodlands, often with junipers (8); see also (3, 7).

Big Tree

Diameter 70 cm, height 16 m, crown spread 13 m. Locality: Riverside County, CA (11).

Oldest

Dendrochronology

Ethnobotany

Observations

Remarks

Citations

(1) Silba 1986.
(2) Elias 1987.
(3) Peattie 1950.
(4) Lanner 1981.
(5) Lanner 1974a.
(7) Perry 1991.
(8) Little 1980.
(9) Kral in Flora of North America online.
(10) Lanner 1974b.
(11) American Forests 1996.