Stone pine; Pino piñonero

Young specimen. The stone pine is a coniferous evergreen tree that can exceed 25 metres in height. In youth, it is a bushy globe, in mid-age an umbrella canopy on a thick trunk, and, in maturity, a broad and flat crown over 8 metres in width. The bark is thick, red-brown and deeply fissured into broad vertical plates.

The flexible mid-green leaves are needle-like, in bundles of two, and are 10–20 centimetres long. Young trees up to 5–10 years old bear juvenile leaves, which are very different, single (not paired), 2–4 centimetres long, glaucous blue-green.

The cones are broad, ovoid, 8–15 centimetres long, and take 36 months to mature, longer than any other pine. The seeds (pine nuts, piñones, pinhões, pinoli, or pignons) are large, 2 centimetres long, and pale brown with a powdery black coating that rubs off easily, and have a rudimentary 4–8 millimetres wing that falls off very easily. The wing is ineffective for wind dispersal, and the seeds are animal-dispersed, originally mainly by the azure-winged magpie, but in recent history, very largely by humans.