A selection of pine cones - the ruler is 6" long The largest cone is from a Bhutan Pine, the smallest is from my garden |
- Pine cones actually have
genders! Male Pine cones are much thinner and much taller than female Pine
cones which are small and more squat.
- Also the females are much
more spiky than males who are more packed together. Males grow on the
bottom part of the pine tree and females grow on the top.
- They way they reproduce,
though, is using the wind. The male produces pollen which then gets blown
into the female.
The smallest cone under a microscope |
- There are lots of different
types of Pine cone my favourite being the Bhutan Pine Cone. This is an
absolutely huge Pine cone as you can see in the picture to the right. It's
as big as my head!
- I suppose you could say that
Pine cones are rather selfish as they keep the Pine tree all to themselves as Pines don't have any flowers or fruit on them.
- Pine cones vary in size
quite a large amount. You can have a very small Pine cone of about 1cm or
you can have a huge Pine cone measuring 70cm!
- They can be quite light and
also very heavy with some weighing a huge 2.25 kg! This type of cone is
called a Coulter Pine cone and it has a reputation of falling off their
tree and killing people!
Rest of the pine under a microscope |
- Pine cones actually grow
with the Sapling of the tree. As the small Pine grows the tiny cones grow
along with the tree.
Here are some links to some more information:
Hope you enjoyed,
Z.
This was really interesting - I had no idea you could tell the pine cones apart either! Great post! - Tasha
ReplyDeleteThanks Natasha, I didn't know either. It looks like we both learned something then!
DeleteThis is one of the reasons that I do my blog, to learn things and it's nice to share it with other people!