piñon

(piñón [piɲón] 'pine nut' < piña 'pine cone' < Latin plneam plus the augmentative -on)

   Any of various dwarf pines that produce edible nuts. Watts gives Pinus edulis, P. monophylla, and P. parryana as examples and notes that Indians made the nuts of these trees part of their diets. The term also refers to the nuts of these trees. The DRAE glosses piñón as the seed of the pine tree and as a shrub of the euphorbiacous family, which grows in warm regions of the Americas to a height of about six and one-half to sixteen feet. It has heart-shaped leaves, petiolate and divided into lobules. It produces flowers on stalks and fleshy fruit with oily seeds, which are used medicinally as a purgative and commercially for their oil. The roots of the plant are made into a violet-colored dye. Santamaría references it as the purgative fruit of various species of the Jathophas species, especially J. curcas, J. multifida, and Curcas purgans. The name also refers to the plant itself, which produces a drupe or small nut, about three-quarters of an inch long, with strong oily, emetic, and poisonous properties. Cobos references piñon as the nut pine and its edible seed. It is common in the (Old) West.

   Alternate forms: pinion, pinyon.