Pinus johannis, the Johann's pine, is a pine in the pinyon pine group, native to North America. The range extends from southeast Arizona and southwest New Mexico, United States, south in Mexico along the Sierra Madre Occidental and the Sierra Madre Oriental to southern Zacatecas and San Luis Potosí. It occurs at moderate to high altitudes, from , in cool, dry climate conditions. Description Pinus johannis is a small to medium-size tree, often just a shrub, reaching tall and with a trunk diameter of up to . The bark is grey-brown, thin and scaly at the base of the trunk. The leaves ('needles') are in mixed fascicles of three and four, slender, long, and deep green to blue-green, with stomata confined to a bright white band on the inner surfaces. The cones are globose, long and broad when closed, green at first, ripening yellow-brown when 16–18 months old, with only a small number of thin, fragile scales, typically 6-12 fertile scales. The cones open to broad when mature, holding the seeds on the scales after opening. The seeds are long, with a thick shell, a white endosperm, and a vestigial wing; they are dispersed by the Mexican jay, which plucks the seeds out of the open cones. The jay, which uses the seeds as a major food resource, stores many of the seeds for later use; some of these stored seeds are not used and are able to grow into new trees. Pinus johannis is nearly dioecious: nearly all individuals produce either male or female cones only, and trees do not appear to change their sex expression over time. History Pinus johannis is a recently described pinyon pine, discovered by Elbert L. Little in 1968 when comparing pinyons growing in Arizona with those of typical Mexican pinyon (Pinus cembroides) in Mexico; he described it as a variety of Mexican pinyon, Pinus cembroides var. bicolor, noting the very different stomatal placing on the leaves; it also differs in needle number, with 3–4 per fascicle, rather than 2–3; in the cones having thinner scales; and in having a denser, more rounded crown. Further research by the French botanist Marie-Françoise Robert-Passini, the American botanists Dana K. Bailey and Frank G. Hawksworth and others, has shown that it is better treated as a distinct species. Although often occurring together with Mexican pinyon, it is reproductively isolated from that by its pollination being a month