Pine Nut

Pine nuts, also called pinon in Spanish, pinoli in Italian, or pignoli, are the edible seeds of pines, in the family Pinaceae and genus Pinus. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization only 29 pine species yield edible nuts suitable for harvesting, of which 20 are traded commercially, since most pine seeds are too small for practical human consumption. China, Russia, North Korea and Pakistan are the major exporters, and because pines are gymnosperms rather than flowering plants, pine nuts are not true nuts in the botanical sense but bare seeds with no enclosing fruit, an example of convergent evolution between unrelated plant groups.