Snow Cones

Red Alder Cones

Red Alder cones like these are sprinkled all around my garden from last autumn. It’s no wonder these trees are growing like weeds among the garden herbs! In the upper-right you see one of the flowered male catkins draped and spent upon the branch.

We have many lovely Red Alders growing around the house, and a healthy young stand maturing on the western portion of the property. The young stand is home to our “blackberry circle” where many young ferns, foxgloves, and up-and-coming evergreens are patiently emerging in the small light gaps.

Fungi and Cones

This week we’ll look at more images from my trip to the Poconos, but for today I wanted to share this image of some fungi growing in the brush pile at the farm.

I'm afraid that for now, I'm clueless when it comes to fungus identification (and I can't find my book). Identification suggestions are always welcome!

We’ve had some excellent submissions for the Festival of the Trees come in so far. There’s still plenty of time to add yours! Just post something at your blog about trees and/or forests, and get me the link by November 29th.

Check out the Festival of the Trees coordinating blog for more information, and have fun!

Norway Spruce, and Other Evergreen Trees

We don’t see nearly enough evergreens here at Arboreality since I left Washington State. Today, I thought I’d share one of the more prominent evergreens here at the farm: the Norway spruce (Picea abies).

You might remember me sharing the Norway spruces with you last winter, when I fell in love with their beautiful cones! We have a few enormous Norway spruces growing around here, which, along with the Eastern white pines, are some of the primary evergreens at the farm.

With all the deciduous trees losing leaves, the conifers get to take their turn in the spotlight. There are other evergreens around here which I have yet to identify... I'll have to make that a winter project!

And then, of course, there’s our up-and-coming Christmas tree from last year, the Oriental spruce (Picea orientalis). I can’t wait to find out what we’re going to plant this year. I have my heart set on an Eastern hemlock, but we’re mostly limited by what live, healthy evergreens we can find at the garden shop at Christmas time.

What are your favorite evergreens? Ooooh… it’s so hard to pick just one!

Ranunculus, Ridiculous

First off, SpiderGirl was right about the ranunculus. The little yellow flowers which I call buttercups (as SpiderGirl pointed out, a type of ranunculus) are in fact, winter aconite (ranunculaceae, Eranthis). My landlady was kind enough to let me in on the secret of their exact common name (and kind enough to offer that I could dig some up and bring it over to my cottage!) Rock on!

Second… I’m in love with a spruce cone.

It’s ridiculous. It’s disturbing. It’s leaning towards dendrophilia!

Ok, it’s nothing untoward… nothing obscene...

Here’s the story: Monday, I was walking my month’s rent check to our landlady and landlord, when one of the great evergreens in their driveway gave me a gift: a cone!

I think you’ll agree that it’s just gorgeous… I picked up two, but I like this one the best – especially because it has a little twig of needles still attached. While I’m not certain of the species, after looking online I believe that this is likely a Norway Spruce. Interestingly, it appears to have already tossed its seeds out of the cone. I can see the groves under the platelets where they should be, but they are all empty.

Anyways, I’ve simply fallen in love with this beautiful cone. I love the feel of its shiny platelets, its uniform radial symmetry, its delicate fragrance, and its pretty little twig. I’ve been carrying this cone around for two days now. It’s been sitting on my desk next to my laptop when I write, and following me around the house while I work.

Is there an 800 number I can call to get help for this sort of thing? :)

Have you ever brought cones into the house (or kept them on the dashboard of your truck) and watched as they opened and closed their platelets? I don’t mean rapidly like fish gills, but slowly over time?

Later today, or perhaps tomorrow, I'll be sharing some more images from the stone ruins. Last night I took some great pictures showing how the trees have taken over what was once a large farm house.

Of needles and cones

We’re still investigating our first mystery tree in Pennsylvania, which is a species of evergreen growing just outside my cottage. Unlike other evergreens I've known, this one has some unique growth habits which we will revisit in a day or two.

By my best educated guess, what we have here is an Eastern White Pine. However, until that is confirmed, we’ll just keep looking and hypothesizing.

In these images we see the needles and cones of our specimen. I’ve placed them in front of my hand so that you can see them better with the contrast from the background, and so that you have a sense of size.

I’ve also included an image of the leaf litter… there are so many beautiful things to see on the ground, and in this image we have the benefit of golden sunset light!

Mice in the cones...

Greetings!

Thanks to two of our readers, we have a little information to supplement my post "Check out the size of those cones!" from October 07, 2005.

Here’s what the Arborealists have to say:

RMD tells us:

"…so in the little known facts department - the mice hanging out of the cones are brachts that are unique to Douglas Fir which really isn't a true fir. It's the common tree here in the lowlands [West of Cascades] that everyone calls fir but the scientific name is Psuedotsuga because the cone morphology is closer to Tsuga (Hemlocks). True firs are Abies - like the Alpine fir or the Grandfirs. In true firs the cones fall apart when they are ripe."

And many thanks to AND for filling in my memory gaps:

"If my memory serves me, the owl wanted to eat the mice & tricked them into in the cones by telling them that is where they'd be safe from the fire..."

Thanks guys!

And, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the Douglas Fir, here is a picture of a couple cones. Unfortunately, the closest Doug Firs are on the other side of the fence, and somehow I doubt the neighbors would believe that I was just collecting cones… so… this is a picture of an older cone specimen, likely from last year.

Check out the size of those cones!

Good morning! Here's another picture of some trees in parking lot b. If you look closely, you can see all the swelling cones on this pair of gorgeous firs!

When I was about eight years old I took a field trip to a local park where we walked along trails with a guide. As usual, I drifted into my own thoughts, preferring to slip among the trees when no one was looking.

I did listen up long enough to hear the guide tell a couple folk tales about fir cones (seems as though she was trying to kill time). I remember somehow thinking that her stories were rather unconvincing (not the first time for me), but strangely, I’ve never quite forgotten the telling.

I can’t seem to find these stories online (at least not quickly), so here’s what I remember:

Back in the days of fairy tales the owl was the wisest in the forest. One day, a massive fire swept through the wood, and the frightened mice cried out, “Owl! What should we do?!” Owl told them to get the heck out of Dodge, and as usual, the mice didn’t listen. Instead, they climbed the nearest fir trees and hid inside the fir cones, hoping that the fire would pass them by. Their failure is evidenced by looking at a fir cone, where you’ll notice the bottom half of the mice hanging out from under the cone plates.

The second story had to do with deer… if you crack off the little cone plates, you can see deer tracks on the underside. Perhaps I half-heard the second bit on some other field trip during which I was lost in my own thoughts…

Was anyone else paying attention?