On today’s show we learn about the Vallarta Pine, a critically endangered conifer native to the state of Jalisco, in western Mexico, near Puerto Vallarta a few miles inland from Banderas Bay on the Pacific Ocean. Its scientific name is Pinus vallartensis and it was first described in 2017.
For more information about Vallarta Pine conservation and to donate to support their protection, please see the Vallarta Botanical Gardens at https://www.vbgardens.org/.
Rough Transcript
Intro 00:05
Welcome to Bad at Goodbyes.
On today’s show we consider the Vallarta Pine.
Species Information 02:05
The Vallarta Pine is a critically endangered conifer native to the state of Jalisco, in western Mexico, near Puerto Vallarta a few miles inland from Banderas Bay on the Pacific Ocean. Its scientific name is Pinus vallartensis and it was first described in 2017.
Description
The Vallarta Pine is a medium-size pine that grows roughly 25-50 ft tall, with a trunk that ranges 1-2 feet in diameter. The outer bark is fairly thick; it can be as much as an inch and half in width, and is a reddish-brown that weathers to a light grey as the tree ages.
The Vallarta Pine has wide-spaced branches and a very open, spreading canopy. Their leaves are needles, needles that grow from the branches grouped in clusters of five. These bundlings, called fascicles, are a kind of condensed stem and a basal sheath that binds the base of the needles wrapping them together.
The Vallarta Pine is evergreen. Their foliage is persistent year-round; it does not die-off each autumn and winter like deciduous trees. Instead, the pine’s individual fascicles have a roughly 2-3 year lifespan, actively photosynthesizing, before detaching from the branch in whole; the short stem, basal sheath and the five needles dropping together as a unit.
This process is called senescence and abscission. So as a pine grows and produces new fascicles, that new growth shades the older needles below, further back on the branch. Even in an open canopy tree like the Vallarta Pine, that reduction in sunlight, coupled with cellular aging and potential physical damage from wind, sun exposure, or pest, means the older fascicles reach a point where their photosynthetic efficiency is so diminished that they’re no longer metabolically viable; the needles taking more energy to maintain, than their photosynthesis is producing.
At that point the pine reabsorbs the needles nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, are transported back into the main branch; chlorophyll is broken down and pulled back into the tree, stopping photosynthesis and causing a very visible color shift from green to yellow and brown. That nutrient salvage process is called senescence.
Then abscission. Specialized enzymes dissolve the cell walls holding the fascicle to the branch, and it separates and falls. On the branch side, the tree produces a resin that creates a protective, sealed scar to block pathogens, pests and prevents water loss.
In deciduous trees we see these processes vibrantly in mass every year as the leaves turn and fall in autumn. With our Vallarta Pine, senescence and abscission occurs at the individual fascicle level, a single bundle reaches the end of photosynthetic productivity, it browns and falls.
The Vallarta Pine’s needles grow to roughly 7 inches in length, are bright green and have a soft, drooping posture; they are not stiff. Their margins, that’s the edge of the needle, are finely serrated, with tiny microscopic ridges.
Reproduction
The Vallarta Pine is a conifer, they produce cones. The Vallarta Pine is monoecious, bearing both male pollen cones and female seed cones. The pollen cones are fairly small, roughly three-quarters of an inch in length and between an eighth and a quarter of an inch in width. They are yellowish brown and their pollen is dispersed by the wind. The seed cones are also yellowish brown and a bit larger, roughly an inch and a quarter in both height and width.
Pollination occurs in August and September, and the fertilized seed cones take roughly a year and a half to fully mature, developing seeds and their woody protective cone. Imagine a pine cone, and the layered spiral of stacked round-ish lobes. These lobes are called scales, and each mature seed cone of the Vallarta Pine has roughly 50 scales, each scale protecting two small seeds, each seed a quarter inch long with a half inch wing.
So about 18 months after fertilization, in March and April, the now mature cone, still hanging on the tree’s branches, begins to dry out, causing the woody tissue of the scales to flex and bend outward, opening the cone and exposing the seeds. These seeds are dispersed by anemochory; that is the wind. The wind catches the seed wing, freeing it from the cone, and the seed travels on the breeze away from the parent plant. Then if the winged seeds land in viable soil, there’s a short, 1-3 month period of dormancy, then seedling growth begins, germination, in May or June, at the start of the rainy season.
In The Dream
————
In the dream,
To walk the shores of the Bay of Flags
In the early morning
Flycatcher, Mockingbird, Wren
Underscore the preshow
In the dawn smudge light
And then the clouds break
To silhouette a pine, arms raised and waving
On the ridgeline.
A greeting, a welcome,
An invitation to another day
Another chance for compromise and kinship
With all with whom we share our bounded time on earth
In the dream.
————
Habitat
The Vallarta Pine is native to the state of Jalisco, in western Mexico, found about eight miles south of the city of Puerto Vallarta, roughly 2-5 miles inland from Banderas Bay on the Pacific Ocean.
The Vallarta Pine is highly localized, distributed in just a roughly 10 square mile area. This a Madrean Pine-Oak Woodlands ecoregion of mountainous terrain and river valleys, where temperate conifer and broadleaf forests meet nearby tropical dry forest ecosystems. We generally find the Vallarta Pine on exposed northern facing hillsides and ridgelines, at elevations from 1200 to 4500 feet, in deep acidic soils.
The landscape is steep and rocky but green. Needle-bearing pines, broadleaf evergreens, deciduous oaks, flowering Magnolia form the overstory and mid-canopy, the understory is thick with Muhly and Grama grass.
This is a subtropical climate with distinct wet and dry seasons. Summer highs reach into the 90s°F and winter lows dip into the upper 50s°F. The wet season is roughly June to October, the dry season November to May and the region receives roughly 50 inches of rainfall per year.
The Vallarta Pine shares its native habitat with:
Encino Amarillo, Southern Flannel Moth, Black-nosed Lizard, Magnificent Frigatebird, Ocelot, Streak-backed Oriole, Common Four-clawed Gecko, Zebra Plant, Shinglewood, Green Jay, Mexican Weeping Bamboo, Beaded Lizard, Mexican Pink Tarantula, Common Fieldcap, Yellow-crowned Night Heron, Buttercup Tree, Grace’s Warbler, Many-lined Whiptail, Mexican Ruellia, Inca Dove, Western Spiny-tailed Iguana, Jalisco Juniper, Green Iguana, Mexican Treefrog, Orange-fronted Parakeet, Brown Pelican, Common Spurwing, and many many more.
Threats
The Vallarta Pine is primarily threatened by human habitat destruction and continued encroachment. Historically and still today, Madrean Pine-oak Woodlands have been cleared for logging, for agricultural planting, and for livestock grazing, destroying and fragmenting the Vallarta Pine’s range.
Additionally, expanding infrastructure and tourism development around Puerto Vallarta continues to degrade the natural ecosystem.
And human induced climate change, caused by persistent over-reliance on fossil fuels, is an emerging threat. Since the 1990s, average temperatures in Mexico have risen by nearly 2°F. And moderate climate modeling suggests that may increase an additional 4 degrees by the end of the century.
Relatedly, the precipitation in Jalisco is increasingly erratic, with more severe and prolonged drought. And the timing of rainfall is shifting, the rainy season delayed, which affects the germination of new Vallarta Pine seedlings.
Higher temps and drier conditions also increase the frequency and intensity of wildfire, a particular risk given the grassy understory in the pine’s habitat.
Conservation
Fortunately, most of the Vallarta Pine’s population falls on land managed by the Vallarta Botanical Gardens, some of which is also legally protected by the state government of Jalisco. Field rangers, camera traps, and boundary monitoring systems are in place to prevent illegal logging, land clearing, and unmanaged wildfire.
The Vallarta Botanical Gardens also has developed a seed-collection program and seed bank repository for the species and has an active horticultural conservation program: propagating saplings for both protected off-site living collections, and for reforesting, replanting in their native range to bolster the wild population and bridge fragmented habitats.
Nevertheless the Vallarta Pine has been considered critically endangered on the IUCN Red List since 2018 and their population is in decline.
Our most recent counts estimate that less than 2500 Vallarta Pine remain in the wild.
Citations 20:11
Information for today’s show about the Vallarta Pine was compiled from:
Coder, K. D. (2008). Leaf senescence & abscission (Tree Leaf Color Series WSFNR08-33). Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Georgia. – http://hdl.handle.net/10724/36467
Cox, T. (2019, October 3). Conifer trees of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. American Conifer Society. – https://www2.conifersociety.org/blogpost/2082607/489898/Conifer-Trees-of-Puerto-Vallarta-Mexico
Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund. (2004). Madrean pine-oak woodlands. In R. A. Mittermeier, P. Robles Gil, M. Hoffmann, J. Pilgrim, T. Brooks, C. G. Mittermeier, J. Lamoreux, & G. A. B. da Fonseca, Hotspots revisited: Earth’s biologically wealthiest and most threatened terrestrial ecoregions. Conservation International. – https://www.cepf.net/our-work/biodiversity-hotspots/Madrean-pine-oak-woodlands
de La Rosa, J. A. P., & Gernandt, D. S. (2017). Pinus vallartensis (Pinaceae), a new species from western Jalisco, Mexico. Phytotaxa, 331(2), 233–242. – https://doi.org/10.11646/phytotaxa.331.2.7
Earle, C. J. (2026, January 11). Pinus vallartensis. The Gymnosperm Database. – https://www.conifers.org/pi/Pinus_vallartensis.php
Farjon, Aljos, and Brian T. Styles. 1997. Pinus (Pinaceae). Flora Neotropica, Monograph 75. New York: The New York Botanical Garden. – https://www.jstor.org/stable/4393881
Gossett, D. R. (2021). Leaf abscission. In Research Starters: Anatomy and Physiology. EBSCOhost. – https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/anatomy-and-physiology/leaf-abscission
iNaturalist – south of Puerto Vallarta
Perez de la Rosa, J., Gernandt, D. & Thomas, P. 2024. Pinus vallartensis. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2024: e.T124561040A124561048. – https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2024-2.RLTS.T124561040A124561048.en
Singh, S. P., Inderjit, Singh, J. S., et al. (2018). Insights on the persistence of pines (Pinus species) in the Late Cretaceous and their increasing dominance in the Anthropocene. Ecology and Evolution, 8, 10345-10359. – https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4499
Ulises, R.-S. H., & Lucia, F.-M. A. (2024). Impacts of Climate Change on Forest Resources in Mexico: Regional Projections and Vulnerabilities. Journal of Geography, Environment and Earth Science International, 28(12), 67–93. – https://doi.org/10.9734/jgeesi/2024/v28i12849
Vallarta Botanical Gardens. (n.d.). Habitat and ecosystem conservation. – https://www.vbgardens.org/habitat-ecosystem-conservation/
Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinus_vallartensis
For more information about Vallarta Pine conservation and to donate to support their protection, please see the Vallarta Botanical Gardens at https://www.vbgardens.org/
Music 22:04
Pledge 28:29
I honor the lives of all Vallarta Pine. I will commit their name to my record. I am grateful to have shared time on our planet with this being. I lament the ways in which I and my species have harmed and diminished this species. I grieve.
And so, in the name of the Vallarta Pine I pledge to reduce my consumption. And my carbon footprint. And curb my wastefulness. I pledge to acknowledge and attempt to address the costs of my actions and inactions. And I pledge to resist the harm of plant and animal kin and their habitat, by individuals, corporations, and governments.
I forever pledge my song to the witness and memory of all life, to a broad celebration of biodiversity, and to the total liberation of all beings.
