Pine Cones

Pine Cones
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A few days ago when I was walking down our driveway, I spotted under one of our pine trees quite a number of green pine cones. I could not remember having seen that many in the years before. Of course, now I checked under other pine trees, but not all pine trees had the same number of cones on the ground. ​

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We all know pine cones, they are woody with scales and they produce the seeds for new pine trees. There are male and  female pine cones; the female ones have a more distinct scale pattern than  the male ones, which are plain although they have the most important pollen. Depending on the pine species, male and female cones can grow on the same tree, but they do not have to.  Each female cone contains multiple seeds which are released when the cone has matured. ​

Jack Pine Cone

The scales of a female cone are flattened to the cone with a resin until it has fully matured or until it is exposed to severe heat. Pine cones from the Jack Pine, for example, are known as serotinous and must be exposed to fire, or fire-like conditions, in order to break down the resin and release the seeds. This fact alone illustrates the folly of our programs of forest fire suppression in the twentieth century in the American West.  Nature had adapted over millennia to be in harmony with intermittent forest fires and had incorporated them into its reproductive cycle. Now, by suppressing fires, we have drastically increased the fuel load which has been causing catastrophic, larger, hotter fires each year. 

Interesting fact: the seed scales on a cone can open and close multiple times while the cone is attached to the tree.​

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I have noticed that there are bunches of cones high up near the top of the tree, whereas others are more evenly distributed around the tree. Well, the male cones may be  near the top  and they open in the spring to pollinate the female cones on the lower branches of other trees. In the autumn some of them fall down to increase the chances of new growth of new pine trees.

But why did I see so many pine cones under some trees? The pine cones falling from the trees now, actually started forming three years ago, so our winter weather isn’t to blame for the bumper crop. Scientists believe it probably has to do with the insect population. Pine trees don’t produce the same amount of cones each year, to throw off the insects that eat the cones. Trees do this as a way of avoiding these predators, because if they produce the cones on erratic, unpredictable cycles the insects can’t adjust to them. Scientists say you can expect to see these bumper crops about every three to seven years.

The folklore however warns that a bumper crop of pine cones means a hard winter. Well, we shall see.

As there are over a hundred different pine trees, you have, of course, very different pine cones. They all are shaped like a cone, but if you look closely, you see how different they are.

As we use cones for our holiday decorations we know how different cones can look. And here are some examples.