Plant · P-560

Mexican Pinyon

Pinus cembroides

Mexican Pinyon is a small, bushy nut pine of hot, dry mountain country, and the main pinyon nut sold commercially in Mexico. Its seed carries the highest protein of any pinyon pine, though a hard seedcoat makes it less preferred there than other pinyon nuts. Unlike some of its relatives, its foliage is real browse for cattle, goats and deer, and its seed feeds wild turkeys, parrots, black bear and peccaries. Insects can destroy up to 90 percent of a seed crop in a poor year, so yield swings hard with rainfall and pest pressure from one season to the next.