Conifers

Continuing on my usual route in the neighborhood today,I became intrigued by a variety of cones I found on the ground. The first one fell from a tall graceful evergreen, its name yet unknown, on a neighboring street. The ground was thick with long, soft, cylindrical shaped cones, one of which I broke in half to look inside:


These cones are from a Western White Pine tree in our neighborhood park.


The Western White Pine has its needles in clusters of five-the ground thick with shed needles here. In the past I've helped myself to some of these branches-just helping with the pruning right?- at Christmas time, since they're the perfect greenery for decorating, pungently fragrant.

Just a few feet over I discovered a different pine tree -
the Lodgepole Pine. It's cones, which are rounder and shorter than the others, can be sprayed gold adding that festive touch.



But beware-they may be loaded with sappy resin which clings tenaciously to fingers and clothes. Its needles are in clusters of 2. I remembered this from a field trip to a forestry station years ago.

Now I was on the look-out for a Douglas Fir cone. Douglas Firs are the most common of conifers along the west coast. But I was quite sure there would be none in this park. As I continued though, I noticed a tall tree in the distance further down the road. As I got closer I saw them, the cones on the ground and then... up, up, up, oh so many beautiful cones hanging on this giant of trees. Yes, these were the ones:
(First picture in this post is a branch of the Douglas Fir Tree way up there)


The Douglas Fir cones are easily identified by remembering this legend attached to it that I used to tell my kids about in school:
As little mice scurried along the forest floor they became frightened by predators chasing them. They scurried into the many fir cones on the ground but couldn't quite hide completely...their tails and hind legs were sticking out. And from this little tale or tail, it's always easy to identify the Douglas Fir.