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| Investigating a Torrey Pine (Pinus torreyana) |
Today Katrina and I hit the road again and
drove down to San Diego to spend New Year’s Eve with her Grandparents. We stopped at Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve on the
way. The Torrey Pine (Pinus torreyana) is one of the many pines
that produce nuts large enough to be worth eating. Torrey Pine nuts formed an important part of
the Kumeyaay tribe diet and are 19-20 mm long, which is larger than most other
pine nuts. Torrey Pine distribution is
limited to Santa Rosa Island and the mouth of the Soledad River near San
Diego, making it the rarest pine tree in North America. Development appears to be the major threat as
all the trees I saw in the reserve were thriving.
I put together a table of all the ethnobotanically significant pine nuts found in North America for those as curious as I was.
We also found Scrub Oak (Quercus
dumosa) growing on the hillsides but didn’t notice any acorns. Evidently, they were not as preferred for acorn collecting as the larger oak trees to the east.
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| Scrub Oak (Quercus dumosa) |