Two-needle pinyon
A short, gnarled pine of the drier Southwest, growing at Mesa Verde, Black Canyon, and Great Sand Dunes, with nuts a jay plants by forgetting them.
Two-needle pinyon at a glance
Pinus edulis TOO-NEE-dul PIN-yun; Pinus edulis is PY-nuss ED-yoo-liss
- Type
- Plant · conifers
- Diet
- Producer
- Size
- A short, often gnarled tree, well under the height of the ponderosa pines and Douglas-firs it grows near.
- Lifespan
- Dominant trees in a stand are often around 400 years old. Some have been found at 800 to 1,000 years.
Like any conifer, it makes its own food from sunlight, water, and air in its needles. Its cones hold seeds, pinyon nuts, that NPS at Great Sand Dunes says are enjoyed by animals and people.
Is it safe to touch?
Harmless. The needles aren't sharp enough to worry about, though the trunk and cones can be sticky with resin. Fine to stand under and pick up a fallen cone.
Pick up a fallen cone under one of these trees and your fingers come away sticky. Two-needle pinyon holds its seeds behind resin-sealed scales, low and gnarled among the taller ponderosa and Douglas-fir at Mesa Verde, a tree built for dry ground rather than height.
Getting that cone open at all usually isn’t the tree’s own job. Pinyon jays do it, prying seeds loose with a beak and a bare patch of face built for exactly this, and NPS at Mesa Verde says the jays depend on the tree’s woodland more than any other bird there. A jay buries far more seeds than it eats, scattered across its range for winter, and the caches it never returns to dig up are what start the next generation of pinyon. The tree that can’t scatter its own heavy seeds on the wind gets a bird to do it by accident.
At Great Sand Dunes, where pinyon mixes with juniper along the foothills, NPS says the same nuts are “enjoyed by animals and people,” which is one more reason the tree turns up wherever the ground is too dry and rocky for much else. Crack one open at the trailhead, and you’re doing what the jays have been doing all along.
Did you know?
- Pinyon-juniper woodland is one of the largest plant communities at Mesa Verde.
- Its seeds, pinyon nuts, are eaten by both wildlife and people at Great Sand Dunes.
- Pinyon jays depend on this tree's cones more than any other bird at Mesa Verde, and the seeds they bury and never dig back up can grow into new pinyon trees.
Common questions
Can you eat pinyon nuts?
Yes. NPS at Great Sand Dunes says the seeds inside two-needle pinyon cones are enjoyed by animals and people.
Why is it called two-needle pinyon?
Its common name comes from its needles growing in bundles of two, which is how it's told apart from other pinyon pines in the Southwest.
What eats pinyon nuts besides people?
Pinyon jays especially. NPS at Mesa Verde says they depend on pinyon-juniper woodland more than any other bird there.
Where does two-needle pinyon grow?
In dry, rocky woodlands across the Southwest, often mixed with juniper, including at Mesa Verde, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and the foothills at Great Sand Dunes.