Day 127 - Perfect Pine cones

A selection of pine cones - the ruler is 6" long
The largest cone is from a Bhutan Pine,
the smallest is from my garden

Hi all today's Day 127 and I when I was thinking about what I was going to do today I looked around and saw some pine cones. I then immediately knew that I was going to do pine cones. A lot of people dis-regard them as something that just grow on trees and make a great crackling sound when you throw them on the fire, but they are actually very interesting as you can see in the facts below:

• 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.

The smallest cone under a microscope

• They way they reproduce, though, is using the wind. The male produces pollen which then gets blown into the female.

• 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:

Pine cones have genders

Pinetum.org - Pine Cones

Hope you enjoyed,

Z.