A Fall Field Guide Nuts

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Dozens of new pecan varieties have been developed since the turn of the century, and the nut is grown commercially in orchards from Georgia to California. Still, fully half the market crop is produced from native species. Wild pecans may be a bit smaller than their commercial counterparts, but their shells crack easily and yield whole, sweet, rich-tasting kernels. There are no bitter or inedible pecan types. Gather all you can find.

Pine Nuts

What the West lacks in deciduous nut-bearing trees it more than makes up for with nut-bearing pines. Among the different species native to the West that produce delicious edible nuts are ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa), Coulter pine (P. coulteri), sugar pine (P. lambertiana) and Digger pine (P. sabiniana). Some of these produce enormous quantities of edible kernels; the sugar pine, for example, produces huge cones up to 18 inches long and four inches across, packed with seeds.

The largest and tastiest pine nuts, though, are produced by the scrubby little pinon pine, a familiar tree throughout the arid Southwest. Pinon nuts, a trendy gourmet item of late, have been a staple among Indians of the region for millenia. Evidence of their consumption has been found in fire pits at archaeological sites in Nevada dated 6,000 years old. At 3,000 calories to the pound, pinons are hardly diet food. Some tribes are said to have forbidden their consumption by pregnant women, for fear that the nuts would fatten the babies too much, making delivery difficult.

There are several species of pinon (also commonly spelled pinyon): In extreme southern California, the Parry pinon (P. quadrifolia); in the deep Southwest, the Mexican pinon (P. cembroides); in southern California and Nevada, the single-leaf pinon (P. monophylla); and through much of the Southwest, the widespread common pinon (P. edulis). The last is the state tree of New Mexico and the major source of pinon nuts harvested for market in this country.

Gathering pinon nuts can be sticky business, particularly if you do so in late summer, when the green cones are still closed and heavy with resin. The cones must be dried in hot sun for several days or charred in a fire to drive off the resin and open the cones sufficiently to free the nuts. An easier approach is to wait till late September or October, when the cones begin to open and take on a brownish color but before they're releasing the nuts. Moisture causes the cones to swell and hold the kernels tightly, so choose a hot, sunny day following several days of dry weather. Spread a tarp on the ground beneath the tree, shake the tree hard a few times, and pick out the nuts that fall to the cloth. Going from tree to tree, you can gather several pounds of nuts in just an hour or so using this technique-if it's a good year for the nuts. Pinons produce a large crop only every three or four years.

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