Pine cones, pine cones everywhere!

Have you noticed all the pine cones on the ground as a result of all the high winds lately? In some places, it is even hard to walk with cones from pines and spruces strewn all over the place.

You might think that the loss of so many cones at one time may affect the trees’ ability to reproduce. After all, the woody structures that we commonly call cones are actually organs that hold the tree’s seeds.

The good news is that the recent storms have brought down last year’s cones. The seeds in those cones had already been dispersed last fall.

As a matter of clarification, there are actually two types of cones on conifer trees: male and female cones.  The familiar woody ones, like the big elongated cones on Norway spruce trees (that suspiciously look like the “cones†or weights commonly found on grandfather clocks) are the female cones, which contain the ovules. Seeds are formed within these ovules after they are fertilized by pollen from the male cones.

 Male cones lack the variety the female cones have between species. Male cones do not have the woody character of female cones and are much less conspicuous. They contain the pollen sacs.

Light wind takes the pollen up to the female cones, which are usually located higher up in the tree. Pollination usually occurs during the summer and it takes six to eight months for the cones to mature.

Another interesting fact is that the seeds are dispersed when the female cone opens its scales. This opening process only occurs during dry weather, insuring that the wind will take the seeds long distances. The opening and closing of the cones actually continues even after the seeds have dispersed and the old cone is blown down.

If you are walking in the woods and see that the cones on the forest floor are closed, then the forest floor is moist. If they are open, then fire danger may be high.

So back to the issue at hand:  If the wind storm had happened in the summer before pollination had occurred and the wind was able to blow down the immature cones, then there might have been a lack of seeds the following fall.  

This was not the case.  

In terms of wildlife, since most of the cones were seedless, aside from their use as nesting material and by the occasional rodent to gnaw on as a tooth sharpener, the abundance of cones was of little interest to animals looking for food. Essentially, we added biomass to the forest floor (and our front yards!) a little sooner than would have normally been the case.

Scott Heth is the director of Audubon Sharon and can be reached at sheth@audubon.org, (subject line: Nature Notes).