Pine cone

“ Men climbed trees and picked digger pine cones or shook limbs to 57 dislodge sugar pine cones. The cones were placed on end and covered with dry grass which was burned, ridding the cones of pitch. After this heat treatment, sugar pine nuts came out easily when cone scales were pulled back. After singeing the heavy digger pine cones were hit with rocks to obtain the large nuts they contained. ”

“ A most peculiar cone is that of a variety of the Norway pine, which, among other species brought from Europe, is valued for ornament. The common jack-pine of the Middle States hillsides wears symmetrical and handsome cones with dignity. Cones are, of course, the fruits or seed-holders of the pine, but the seeds themselves are found at the base of the scales, or parts of the cones, attached in pairs. Each cone, like an apple, has in its care a number of seeds, which it guards against various dangers until a kindly soil encourages the rather slow germination characteristic of the order. ”

“ The seed of this little pine, together with a score or more of others, grew in a cone out near the end of the pine-tree limb. This pine was on a mountain several miles from the fire-ruined slope, when one windy autumn day some time after the seeds were ripe, the cone began to open its fingers and the seeds came dropping out. The 176 seed of this baby tree was one of these, and when it tumbled out of the cone the wind caught it, and away it went over trees, rocks, and gulches, whirling and dancing in the autumn sunlight. ”

“ This plucking and stripping of a pine cone is a business which he [the squirrel] and his family understand perfectly. . . . He does not prick his fingers, nor pitch his whiskers, nor gnaw the solid cone any more than he needs to. Having sheared off the twigs and needles that may be in his way (for, like a skillful wood-chopper, he first secures room and verge enough) , he neatly cuts off the stout stem of the cone with a few strokes of his chisels, and it is his. ”

“ I think that I may venture to say that every white-pine cone that falls to the earth naturally in this town, before opening and losing its seeds, and almost every pitch-pine one that falls at all, is cut off by a squirrel, and they begin to pluck them long before they are ripe, so that when the crop of white-pine cones is a small one, as it commonly is, they cut off thus almost every one of these before it fairly ripens. ”

“ When the cone dies, the seeds it harbors live on. During the winter months the squirrels improve every fair day to gather pine seeds for their present needs and their future wants. If you have ever watched a squirrel open up a pine cone, you have wondered how he learned so well the art of getting the seeds out easily. He handles the cone as adeptly as a trained athlete might handle a weight. ”

“ A Pine cone is never absolutely cylindrical nor do its scales vary in size proportionately to the change of diameter. Most of the scales of a cone are in indefinite phyllotactic relation, while definite phyllotaxis is found only at points on the cone. ”

“ You will see them hanging from the ends of the upper branches, and perhaps you may find some empty ones on the ground. Look at them. Those thin scales are very different from the tough walls of the pine cone: each one is shaped off to a point, and this point is divided into two sharp teeth.
Perhaps when you are looking for the cones, you will find growing fast to the branches [Pg 123] among the leaves some fanciful things that look like little cones. These are very gay; every scale has a border of crimson velvet and a green spine in the middle of its back, like a little tusk. ”

“ It is interesting to gather a number of different species of pine cones before they have begun to open and watch them do so. Some of them jump around like things possessed as the scales on which they rest open up; others roll this way and turn that. When the last scale is open and the last seed is out, the cone may be three times as large as it was formerly and a hundred or more seeds have been set free. ”

“ Nature matures a million conifer seeds for each one she chooses for growth, so we can only speculate as to the selection of the seed from which sprung this storied pine. It may be that the cone in which it matured was crushed into the earth by the hoof of a passing deer. It may have been hidden by a jay; or, as is more likely, it may have grown from one of the uneaten cones which a Douglas squirrel had buried for winter food. Douglas squirrels are the principal nurserymen for all the Western pineries. Each autumn they harvest a heavy percentage of the cone 35 crop and bury it for winter. ”

“ Then it grows cones on the topmost whorl, royal purple and burnished gold, erect on the ends of the branches like Christmas candles. The sapling fir had only three in his first season of bearing, but he was very proud of them, for now he was no longer a sapling, but a tree.
When one has to devote the whole of a long season to growing cones, one has not much occasion to think of other things. By the time there were five rows of cone-bearing branches spread out broadly from the silver fir, the woodchuck made a remark to the pipsissawa which is sometimes called prince's pine. ”

“ They get the seeds by cutting off the scales at the base in regular order, following their spiral arrangement, and the two seeds at the base of each scale, a hundred or two in a cone, must make a good meal. The yellow pine cones and those of most other species and genera are held upside down on the ground by the Douglas squirrel, and turned around gradually until stripped, while he sits usually with his back to a tree, probably for safety. ”

“ Some of the pollen-grains stick to the edges of the scales on the young cones, and the pollen-shoots find their way down to the ovules and fertilize them. In the ripe cone we find, on the scales separating, there are two winged seeds under each scale. The timber of P. sylvestris is very valuable, and large quantities of it are annually imported from Norway and the shores of the Baltic; there are numerous varieties of it, known commercially as Red pine, Norway pine, Riga pine, Baltic pine, etc. The tree begins to bear cones between the age of fifteen and twenty years. ”

“ While I was working over the old pine, a Frémont squirrel who lived near by used every day to stop in his busy harvesting of pine-cones to look on and scold me. As I watched him placing his cones in a hole in the ground under the pine-needles, I often wondered if one of his buried cones would remain there uneaten, to germinate and expand ever green into the air, and become a noble giant to live as long and as useful a life as Old Pine. ”

“ In the conifers proper the female reproductive organs have the form of cones, which may be styled flowers or inflorescences according to different interpretations of their morphology. In the Taxaceae the flowers have a simpler structure. The female flowers of the Abietineae may be taken as representing a common type. A pine cone reaches maturity in two years; a single year suffices for the full development in Larix and several other genera. ”

“ Fifty or more scales has each cone, a hundred or more seeds, if the fertilization has been perfect, are ripe and ready to go forth and produce other pine trees. In early September the sap begins to recede from these ripe cones, the scales lose their green plumpness and begin to dry and curl back toward the base of the cone. This gives the seed eating birds, the siskins, the pine grosbeaks and especially the crossbills their best opportunity and they eagerly pluck out such seeds as the narrow openings will give them a chance at. ”

“ Unlike other Southern pines, common to Texas, this species grows in a “grass” stage for 2 to 5 years during which time it resembles a clump of grass. Once longleaf pine starts its height growth, it grows rapidly.
The “FRUIT”, a cone bur, is 6 to 10 inches long, and slightly curved, the thick scales armed with small curved prickles. The cones usually fall soon after the seed ripens, leaving their bases attached to the twigs.
The WOOD is heavy, hard, strong, tough and durable. It is used for construction. ”

“ Crossbills have the easier time, feeding as they do on the seeds of the pine, for these are always available. No sound seems better to accord with the spirit of a still cold winter day than this faint crackling of opening cones, forced asunder by the [Pg 163] shearing motion of the peculiar bills of these birds. Surely here is an adaptation to definite ends. Nature produces a cone that cannot readily be opened, and, as if relenting, produces a bird to open it. The wings of the seeds come zigzagging to the ground as the feast continues overhead—all that is destined to be planted. ”

“ The female flowers (cones) vary considerably in size; the largest are the more or less spherical cones of Araucaria—a single cone of A. imbricata may produce as many as 300 seeds, one seed to each fertile cone-scale—and the long pendent 760 cones, 1 to 2 ft. in length, of the sugar pine of California (Pinus Lambertiana) and other species. ”

“ Spring-shoots uninodal. Leaves binate, slender, from 15 to 20 cm. long, the hypoderm of uniform thick-walled cells, resin-ducts medial, or with internal or septal ducts, endoderm-cells very unequal in size, some of them large. Conelets unarmed. Cones from 5 to 8 cm. long, peculiarly narrow-cylindrical, symmetrical; apophyses lustrous, rufous brown, radially carinate, the transverse keel prominent.
Of the habit of this Pine I know nothing. As a species it is very clearly defined by its peculiar cone and leaf-section. It grows in the Philippines, Sumatra, Lower Burmah and western Indo-China. ”

“ They also hide scattered cones here and there and place stores of beechnuts, corn, and other seeds in hollows or underground store-rooms. They are fond of edible mushrooms and sometimes lay up half a bushel of them among the branches of trees or bushes to dry for winter use. In the western mountains their great stores of pine cones are often robbed by seed-gatherers for forestry nurseries. In winter they tunnel through the snow to their hidden stores and sometimes continue the tunnels from one store to another. ”

“ It ranges from central Spain through the Pyrenees, Alps and Apennines to the Balkan Mountains, associated with P. cembra at higher, with P. sylvestris at lower altitudes. It grows indifferently in bogs and on rocky slopes. Its dwarf form, under the name of the Mugho Pine, is extensively cultivated as a garden ornament.
On the differences of the cone this species has been divided into three subspecies: uncinata, with an oblique cone and protuberant apophyses; pumilio, with a symmetrical cone and an excentric umbo; mughus, with a symmetrical cone and a concentric umbo. ”

“ Only a few pines bear anything resembling a cone. In the case of the red pine its fruit is a fleshy, acorn-like cup, brilliantly red with a blue-black seed embedded in it; in the black pine it is a small-black plum with one seed ”

“ They are usually kept in the cones until they are wanted, and will then retain their freshness for some years. The squirrels eagerly seek after the fruit of this pine and almost subsist upon it. They take the cone in their paws and dash out the seeds, thus scattering many of them and helping to propagate the tree. ”

“ West of Spud Rock are abundant small groves of MEXICAN WHITE PINE.
A cone-bearing tree growing with Douglas-fir—exclusively on higher northern and northeastern slopes of Mica Mountain—is the WHITE FIR. Flattened, gray-green needles curving upward from the branches, and large, green cones growing upright on limbs near the tops of the trees identify this beautiful evergreen. On open stands, limbs of even the large trees grow from the trunk almost down to the ground. ”

“ The little, tender balls which you found near the young bud at the end of the branchlet is a new cone just started this year. The harder, darker growth farther down among the needles is a last year’s cone.
“My home is not in this country. I was brought from a country of highlands and mountains where the Scottish people live. I am called a Scotch pine. I do not choose to live in a graveyard, but I am willing to serve man and God by doing my best wherever I chance to be. ”

“ Left to themselves they have been flying away ever since September, a few at a time on dry, windy days when their single wings would scull them farthest. One might impute instinct or whatever it is to the pine tree too, she works so methodically for the preservation of her species. A year ago last spring the mother pine put forth the beginnings of those pine cones that now dangle brown and pitchy, or drop to the ground, useless except as kindlings for my campfire. ”

“ The big, rough, burly cones, five to eight or ten inches in length and five or six in diameter, are rich brown in color when ripe, and full of hard-shelled nuts that are greatly prized by Indians and squirrels. This strange-looking pine, enjoying hot sunshine like a palm, is sparsely distributed along the driest part of the Sierra among small oaks and chaparral, and with its gray mist of foliage, strong trunk and branches, and big cones seen in relief on the glowing sky, forms the most striking feature of the foothill vegetation. ”

“ The bark is much thinner than that of the ponderosa pine; gray scales on the bark of young trees become brown with age. The cones are about 2 inches long and are borne in clusters of two or three, tightly attached to the branch. Cones often remain on the tree for years, the seeds retaining their vitality. After a light forest fire, the undamaged cones will open, releasing the seeds. This is nature’s way of reseeding a fire-swept area and explains the extremely dense stands of lodgepole pine which, for example, you will see near Many Parks Curve. ”

“ Old trees may carry hundreds or even thousands of seed-filled cones. Once I counted 14,137 of these on the arms of one veteran lodge-pole. If we allow but twenty seeds to the cone, this tree alone held a good seed-reserve. Commonly a forest fire does not consume the tree it kills. With a lodge-pole it usually burns off the twigs and the foliage, leaving many of the cones unconsumed. The cones are excellent fire-resisters, and their seeds usually escape injury, even though the cones be charred. ”