 | Pinus remota (Little) Bailey & Hawksworth 1979Common NamesTexas pinyon, paper-shell pinyon, Catarina pine, piñon, nut pine (1).Taxonomic notesSubsection Cembroides. Syn: Pinus cembroides var. remota Little 1966; P. catarinae M.-F. Robert-Passini 1981. Raising Little's variety to species rank is justified because of the thin-walled seed shells and early loss of fascicle sheaths, two characters that are more clearly expressed in Mexican than Texas populations and that clearly set this taxon apart from the P. cembroides complex (2). Conversely, P. catarinae is distinguished from P. remota by nothing more than habit; it grows as a shrub rather than an erect tree, a situation evidently due to poor site quality at its type locale (1).DescriptionRangeUSA: Texas, on the Edwards Plateau and in the extreme W along the Rio Grande; and Mexico: Chihuahua, Coahuila & extreme W Nuevo León. The populations are all disjunct, found in isolated mountain ranges (a situation that certainly implies this species is more widespread during periods of reduced temperature and increased moisture availability, such as during the late Pleistocene). Although found at 450 m elevation on the Edwards Plateau, in Mexico it occurs at 1200-1850 m elevation, often on calcareous substrates, on particularly dry sites where it may assume shrub habit. As such, it is a typical piñon of the cold Chihuahuan desert, typically occurring with Juniperus monosperma or Juniperus ashei, species of Quercus and Cercocarpus, and occasionally Pinus cembroides or Pinus arizonica var. stormiae(2).Big TreeOldestDendrochronologyEthnobotanyObservationsRemarksCitations(1) Perry 1991.(2) Farjon & Styles 1997. |
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