As I was out running this morning, it was necessary to watch my step. We have a had a few windy days here, and there were many cones along the sides of the roads. Those dang cones could cause a good run to go bad by twisting an ankle. But as I was staring at my path ahead in one particular area, I couldn't help but notice that the cones on the ground did not match the trees that were overhead. They had blown from the other side of the street.And that gave me the idea for my blog post today. I'll start with a quiz.
What is this?:
Sorry. That's incorrect. It's a fir cone. Let's try another.
Wrong again. This one is a spruce cone. A Norway Spruce to be exact.
Next?
Oooooh. Good guess. This one is a hemlock cone. Last try.
What do you know? It IS a pine cone.A few years ago, I didn't know my trees. And then we planted 3,000 conifers, and I quickly learned the differences in not only their needles and general shapes, but also their cones. And one day I had one of those moments where you slap your forehead and say, "DUH!" out loud when it occurred to me that what I had been referring to as PINE CONES my entire life were likely not pine cones. Pine cones come from pine trees, fir cones grow on fir trees, hemlock trees produce hemlock cones.
Our kids all know this, too. They will give you a funny look if you ever refer to something as a pine cone when it is NOT a pine cone. They will politely correct you. Same with the needles. In fact, if you do actually find pine needles, the kids will probably ask you, "Is it a 2-needle pine or a 3-needle pine?"
So next time you are hiking (or running), notice the cones on the ground and then look up to see if they fell from a pine tree or a fir tree.
Just to show you how insane our family is about this, when I was in Omaha, I went to the Images of Nature gallery in The Old Market. Mark and I used to go there to daydream in our poor student days. I saw this photograph that I wanted, along with a few others.
I texted Mark a picture of this one and the 2 others I liked, and asked him which was his favorite. He responded, "The owl in the spruce tree." It made me giggle. What other guy would have known that the owl was sitting in a spruce and not in a pine tree?Yeah. That's how we roll.
2 comments:
Good one! I grew up with my parents referring to "fir needles". We didn't have pine trees so I didn't know the difference. It wasn't till later that I learned the difference when began planting trees up at our lake property. You are correct! There are no "pine cones" on a Hemlock tree!
At the beginning of your post when you said cones, I thought about the orange safety cones along the road. I've spent much time driving I-84 his week, and they are everywhere! I wondered what they had to do with owls : ) thanks for the lesson!
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