Pinus remota, commonly known as the Texas pinyon or papershell pinyon, is a pine in the pinyon pine group, native to southwestern Texas and northeastern Mexico. It can be distinguished from other pinyon species by its thin-walled seeds, which made it especially attractive as a food to Indians and Mexicans living where it grew. Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca noted that the papershell pinon was an important food for the Indians in 1536. Description Pinus remota is a small tree or large shrub, reaching 3–10 m tall and with a trunk diameter of up to 40 cm. The bark is thick, rough, and scaly. The leaves ('needles') are in mixed pairs and threes (mostly pairs), slender, 3–5 cm long, and dull gray-green, with stomata on both inner and outer surfaces. The cones are squat globose, 3–5 cm long and broad when closed, green at first, ripening yellow-buff when 18–20 months old, with only a small number of thin scales, with typically 5-12 fertile scales. The cones open to 4–6 cm broad when mature, holding the seeds on the scales after opening. The seeds measure 10–12 mm long, with a very thin shell, a white endosperm, and a vestigial 1–2 mm wing; they are dispersed by the Woodhouse's scrub jay, which plucks the seeds out of the open cones. The jay, which uses the seeds as a food resource, stores many of the seeds for later use, and some of these stored seeds are not used and able to grow into new trees. Taxonomy Texas pinyon was previously included in Mexican pinyon, only being discovered as distinct in 1966 when US botanist Elbert L. Little noticed that the seed shells of some pinyons in Texas were very thin compared to many others. He treated it as a variety of Mexican pinyon, Pinus cembroides var. remota. Subsequent research found other differences, and it is now usually treated as a distinct species, probably more closely related to the Colorado pinyon P. edulis, which shares thin seed shells and needles mostly in pairs. Texas pinyon differs from both Mexican and Colorado pinyons in the very small, recessed umbo on the cone scales (larger and knob-like on other pinyons). Distribution and habitat The range is in western Texas, United States, on the south edge of the Edwards Plateau and the hills between Fort Stockton and Presidio, and in northeastern Mexico, mainly in Coahuila but also