SC - RE: Pine nuts

[Decker, Terry D.]

Mr. Declercq,

It is a pleasure to hear from you.  I will certainly attempt to provide you
some answers, but let me give you some caveats about my knowledge.  Cooking,
especially historical cooking, is an avocation for me.  My interest in pines
is primarily pine nuts and their use in cooking.  I have no real background
in botany or biology beyond the general courses required at the university.
I try to use the scientific names of plants when referencing them to insure
precision when discussing the plants historically.

There are supposed to be 93 species (the web site, whose URL I give later,
shows 104) of Pinus world wide, 22 of which are found in China.  It is my
understanding that the species primarily used as a source of nuts in China
is Pinus koraiensis.  Other Chinese species of which I am aware are:

Pinus tabulaeformis
Pinus densata
Pinus yuannanensis
Pinus luchensis (syn. P. huangshanensis and P. taiwanensis)
Pinus bungeana 

To my knowledge, which is limited, there are no toxic members of the genus
Pinus.  In general, pine nuts and needles are edible and were commonly used
by hunter/gatherer cultures.  Modern commercial pine nuts are collected from
species which provide the largest, least resinous tasting nuts.  

For descriptions and scientific references, I recommend:

http://home.earthlink.net/~earlecj/pinaceae/pinus/

A more difficult source to find is:

W.B. Critchfield & E.L. Little, Jr., Geographic Distribution of the Pines of
the World; USDA Forest Service Misc. Publication 991, 1966.

I will forward your message and my reply to the SCA cook's list, where the
original message you saw was first posted.  In time, they will probably
appear in Stefan's Florilegium with the original message.

It has been my pleasure to assist you, and I hope that it will prove useful
to you.

Terry Decker



> Mr. Decker,
> 
> I am writing you because I saw your interet about pine nuts and pinons
> in your letter of Thu, 4 Jun 1998 13:21:32. I have got some questions
> about
> pinons and maybe you can answer me.
> 
> Do you know which species of Pinus are present in China?
> Are the nuts of those Pinus edible?
> If they are not edibible, can you tell me why? (Toxicity?)
> Do you know a site on Internet where I can find the photos of all the Pine
> nuts or a description of them?
> 
> I hope you have the time to answer me...
> Thank you very much.
> 
> Laurent Declercq.
> Student in Pharmacy in ULB (Brussels University) 
> 
> 
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