My favorite conifer in the US, so far the world, is the ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa). They can become huge, living 300-600 years. They grow in elevations that I tend to enjoy most -- since I first learned of them in Colorado, I always thought of their home range as around 7,000 feet. But sources say it grows from sea level to about 9,000 feet.
Above all else, they invite a passerby to sniff them. When one pokes his nose into a furrow of the bark, he is rewarded with the smell of butterscotch (some say vanilla).
Unable to capture the smell on film, this time, I bring you a photo of the photogenic female cone of the ponderosa. These lined the path in places of Desolation. It's hard to imagine there's a function of the 2-tone color of the inside of the scales on these cones. I wonder if that is just an effect from the materials used for that part of the cone. Or is it a pattern designed to have a certain effect on wildlife? Although I'm not sure, I believe they are wind pollinated -- in other words, they don't rely on birds or insects to move their pollen from male to female tree. So that would exclude any reason for the cone scales to attract the attention of a pollinator.
 |
| Ponderosa Cone, Desolation Wilderness, 2012. |
