Re: pine cones
gardenchat@hort.net
  • Subject: Re: pine cones
  • From: &* <d*@comcast.net>
  • Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 00:40:46 -0500
Alternate bearing is common for many woodies. It's not always a sign of stress. Some plants with attractive fruit/nuts/cones bloom in alternate years in order to thwart squirrels and such.
Lack of fruiting can also be related to cold snaps during the flowering season, wet spells ditto- especially with bee-pollinated plants. We lost an entire year of production with the Great Easter Freeze a few years ago. The next year, fruiting plants outdid themselves, presumably because they had an extra amount of nutrients in reserve. 

d




Started a fire in the fireplace this evening, since it's dropped into the
teens.
I've been putting it off because firewood is scarcer and more expensive this 
year than in the past.
Last year there were so many pine cones from our white pines that I picked
up bushels - gave away at least two garbage-bags full, used another two,
toasted another to use for decorations on Christmas wreaths, and still have 
a couple of bags left.  This year there are almost no cones at all. I went
out
to look for them before the leaf-clean-up crew came, and there were just
almost none - I found about six. Is this a result of the dry season? Or do 
the trees have a cycle of reproduction?
I'm noticing that the dogwoods are full of buds for next year. Their bloom 
was exceptionally poor this year.  I have heard that heavy bloom indicates
stressful conditions, and surely this drought year was stressful for them.
We lost many dogwoods about 20 years ago when they were attacked by
a disease, but the remaining ones seem to have been stabilized in recent
years. I hope we're not going into another spell of losing dogwoods. This 
is just about the Northern edge of their tolerance zone - not many just a
few
miles north of here - but we used to have many and still have quite a few in 
the wild.
Auralie


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