描述
Pinus edulis, the Colorado pinyon, two-needle pinyon, or piñon pine, is a pine in the pinyon pine group whose ancestor was a member of the Madro-Tertiary Geoflora (a group of drought resistant trees) and is native to the United States.
The cones are globose, 3 centimetres (1.2 in) to 5 centimetres (2.0 in) long and broad when closed, green at first, ripening yellow-buff when 18?20 months old, with only a small number of thick scales, with typically 5-10 fertile scales. The cones open to 4 centimetres (1.6 in) - 6 centimetres (2.4 in) broad when mature, holding the seeds on the scales after opening. The seeds are 10 millimetres (0.39 in) to 14 millimetres (0.55 in) long, with a thin shell, a white endosperm, and a vestigial 1 millimetre (0.039 in) - 2 millimetres (0.079 in) wing; they are dispersed by the Pinyon Jay, which plucks the seeds out of the open cones. The jay, which uses the seeds as a food resource, stores many of the seeds for later use, and some of these stored seeds are not used and are able to grow into new trees.