Pinus sabiniana

Gray pine or digger pine, a 3-needle pine, is in the pine or Pinaceae family and is native to California in the United States, throughout the Sierra Nevada and Coast Range foothills that ring the Central, San Joaquin and interior valleys; the Transverse and Peninsular Ranges; and Mojave Desert sky islands.

The species is closely related to coulter pine (Pinus coulteri), with large, heavy, spiny cones. It grows generally to 40 m tall.

• Needles are in fascicles of 3, distinctively pale gray-green, sparse and drooping, and grow to 20–30 cm in length near the ends of branch tips. Branches are in annual whorls.
• Mature seed cones large and heavy, 12–35 cm long and almost as wide as they are long. When fresh, they weigh from 0.3 to 0.7 kilograms. They grow at the base of shoots on the lower branches, on stout stocks about 5 cm long, cones often remaining on the branch long after the seeds have fallen; cone scales are terminated by large, triangular, hooked spines.