Author: Linné, Family: pinaceae
Latin synonym: picea cembra
The stone pine is the hardiest of all trees, preferring a cold, dry climate and growing in heights up
to more than 2750 m. There are two subspecies, the European stone pine of the Alps (ssp.
cembra) which grows also in the Carpathians, and the Siberian stone pine (ssp. sibirica) whose
area ranges from 45° up to 68° northern latitude!
In the past the seeds were exported from Switzerland as a specialty, in Siberia they are still in the
market.
More about pines in MGMH
Text References: Food
| CB 24, 392 |
Feast at Clan Gathering
Another [clan] brought a special variety of pinecones, from a tree
that was unique to the area of their cave, that yielded large tasty nuts
released by the heat of a fire. |
| VH 5, 79 |
I think those pine trees are the kind with the big nuts in the cones,
though. I'll check them later. |
| MH 6, 86 |
If we head toward that stand of stone pines by the little creek, we
can collect the ripe pine nuts from the cones, too, if there's time." |
| MH 6, 87 |
"But I think I'll get the pine nuts first, and leave the grain collecting
to the rest of you." |
| MH 14, 212 |
But they did supplement the traveling food (...) with the oily
rich and nutritious pignon seeds from the cones of stone pines, (...) thrown
on the fire to open with a pop. |
| MH 16, 254 |
"Crozie and Manuv have gone off with Latie and the young ones to get fresh pine boughs to make the baths smell nice." |
| MH 17, 264 |
A certain variety of round, hard starchy roots that took well to long
cooking came out first, followed by baskets of a mixture of bone marrow,
blue bearberries, and a variety of cracked and ground seeds - pigweed,
a mixture of grains, and oily pignon seeds. The result, after hours of
steaming, had a heavy, puddinglike consistency that retained the shape
of the basket after it was removed, and while not sweet, though the berries
gave it a light fruit flavor, was deliciously rich. |
| MH 22, 344 |
"Mother made some of her steamed loaves with pine nuts last night and
gave me one." |
| MH 27, 442-443 |
Mamutoi Spring Feast
For the big Spring Feast, nothing left over from the previous year
would be eaten. (...) Every edible vegetable product they could find was
collected. Birch and willow catkins; the young unfolding stems of ferns
as well as the old rootstocks which could be roasted, peeled, and pounded
into flour; the juicy inner cambium bark of pines and birch, sweet with
new rising sap; a few purplish-black curlewberries, filled with hard seeds,
growing beside the small pink flowers on the ever-bearing low scrub; and
from sheltered areas, where they had been covered with snow, bright //
red lingonberries, frozen and thawed to a soft sweetness, lingered with
the dark leathery leaves on low tufted branches. |
| PP 6, 91 |
Ayla eagerly picked a few cones when she saw they were stone pines,
for the large, delicious pine nuts they contained. |
| PP 8, 119 |
Traveling Provisions
There also were grains and seeds, some that had been partially cooked
and then parched; some shelled and roasted hazelnuts; and the stone-pine
cones full of rich nuts she had collected from the valley the day before. |
| PP 8, 119 |
Breakfast
They were cooked with the rich pine nuts Ayla had gathered the day
before, which were released from the pine cones by fire and cracked with
a rock. Some fresh ripe dewberries rounded out the meal. |
| PP 13, 210-211 |
A mixed stand of majestic elms, // elegant birches, and fragrant
lindens marching up a hillside, overshadowed a thicket of edibles that
they stopped to gather: raspberries, nettles, hazel brush with not-quite-ripe
hazelnuts, just the way Ayla liked them, and a few stone pines bearing
rich, hard-shelled pine nuts within their cones. |
| PP 24, 410 |
She gathered cones of the stone pines, and when she put them on the
fire, she was pleased to see that several of them still had large, hard-shelled
pine nuts in them that the heat had helped to crack. |
| PP 24, 411 |
She started their herb tea steeping, adding some birch cambium for the wintergreen flavor, then took the pine cones out of the edge of the fire. They sat by the fire for a while, sipping their tea and eating pine nuts, cracked with rocks or sometimes with their teeth. |
| PP 30, 493 |
For their meal the evening before, Ayla had prepared a larger than
usual amount of a hearty soup from dried bison meat and dried roots, adding
a few pine nuts from the cones of the stone pines, but Jondalar had not
been able to eat as much as he thought. |
| PP 30, 496 |
Feast for S'Armunai
She had even added some oily pine nuts from the cones of the stone pines. |
| PP 33, 549 |
Winter Food
"I have seen and eaten food that Ayla has found, even in winter. You
even ate some of it tonight. She gathered the pine nuts from the stone
pines near the river." |
|
Abbreviations |
Editions |
| CB |
The Clan of the Cave Bear |
The page numbers refer to the hardcover editions by Crown Publishers, Inc, New York 1980, 1982, 1985, 1990.
Book 1-3 are the Special Collector's Edition, I don't know if the page numbers differ from those of the 'normal' hardcover editions. |
| VH |
The Valley of Horses |
| MH |
The Mammoth Hunters |
| PP |
The Plains of Passage |
| (...) |
omission |
Copyright |
| ... |
original in text |
All book quotes: © Copyright Jean M. Auel
The format and text contents of this site are the property of the author |
| MGMH |
'A Modern Herbal', by Mrs. M. Grieve |
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