Retro Man and I noticed that a lot of pine cones had fallen on Tree Ring since the last time we were there, so we brought one home. We thought we could plant the pine cone and grow a Country slash pine on our City property.
But we looked closer and thought maybe there were seeds in the pine cone.
So we looked for the seed.
Not knowing what a pine tree seed looks like, we figured that you plucked one of the wooden thingies from the pine cone and the seed would be attached.
Nope. That thing wouldn't budge.
So we looked it up on-line.
The wooden thingy is called a scale.
Turns out there are male and female cones (duh, of course). The male cones are called catkins and are very small and fragile. They release pollen in the Spring to fertilized the female cones and then fall off the tree.
Female pine cones take 2-3 years to mature. While the female cones are closed and growing, they develop little winged seeds close to the center of the pine cone. When the pine cone opens, the seeds fly out and disperse seeds up to 150 feet from the tree. Many pine cones require fire to open and free the seed, which is true for the Longleaf Pine (my favorite), and one of the reasons that Longleaf is no longer prevalent due to the unpopularity of burning. A picture of some longleaf pine seeds can be found here.
The pine cone we brought home was open and didn't have any seeds. But we pulled apart some unopened scales at the bottom and found tiny winged seeds.
Something I didn't realize is that pine nuts are truly edible pine seeds.
So now we know where pine seeds are.
We went to the St. Petersburg Pier the other day, and saw something up close we had only seen far away before.
It's a church on the water, and it is used for weddings. As I turned to Retro Man to say what a great idea, we should.....
Mr Romantic saw the look on my face and pointed out that it wasn't free, and he was already married to me. We need the money for other things, like a trailer for the Polaris.
I have to admit it, I want the trailer more than another wedding.
A huge Queen's Wreath is located about two feet away from the car I use to go to work. For the last month, I've been dodging the bees as I get in and out, trying to make sure one didn't become a passenger. I'm kind of scared of bees.
In my rush, I never actually looked at the bees, but last week I noticed that there were many different types of bees.
This one was the prettiest. It has a shiney green body.
This is one is the most common type of bee I see on plants in our yard, and one I would term a honey bee.
But this one was totally unexpected.
He seemed like more of a schizophrenic bee, because he never actually stopped long enough at a flower to do anything. More like a librarian bee. He is what I would call a bumble bee, but definitely smaller than the type in Virginia where I grew up.
Even though I'm scared of bees, I hope to work that out, and have a bee hive at Tree Ring one day. If any of you know what type of bees these are, please let me know.
It has been really busy lately, so there are more pictures than prose.
Some may think that is a good thing!
