The artful amoeba1/26/2024 ![]() Was the cone the seed? Did the seeds even exist? As it turns out, the seeds are missing by the time you examine a cone because they have usually taken wing on the little sails they sprout. Growing up, I was mystified by pine cones because I could never find the seeds. Just seeds - which are themselves plant embryos packaged with a little nutrition to get them going when they land in a spot with promise. Not spores like mosses or ferns, nor seeds embedded in fruit like flowering plants. Gymnosperms are so called because they make “naked seeds”. They’re not all bristly, but there’s more to conifer cones than meets the eye. But for today, let’s focus on their cones. From their strappy or needle-like laugh-at-dehydration leaves to their incredibly beautiful bordered pit-pocked water-transporting wood cells called tracheids, to their stranglehold of Earth’s real estate from 50-70 degrees North, conifers deserve respect. But cone-bearing trees - gymnosperms to botany nerds - are way cool. well, conifers get made into toilet paper (in fairness, so do some deciduous trees). In spite of all this awesomeness in just one of their number, plants get no respect. Not my photo - I was too busy slogging uphill. ![]() As you can see, the bristles shrink as the cone ages. ![]() How the bristlecone pine earned its name. Dark olive green and indeed quite bristly, they seemed like stiff, bony, but still somehow elegant codgers of the pine world. I had never seen one up close before, and here was a whole forest of them. Their entire bodies possess this unearthly Sophia-Loren-like aging prowess unlike most pines, whose needles last two to four years before they’re shed, bristlecone pine needles may hang around for 45. These can power through 3- to 5,000 years on stony crags in California and Nevada, making them the oldest single living organisms on Earth. The biggest treat of a 15-or-so mile hike I did was getting to hike through a real, honest-to-goodness bristlecone pine forest. There is also a Middle Park - home to the ski resort confusingly named Winter Park - and a North Park, which touches the border with Wyoming and is home to Walden, the “moose-viewing capital of Colorado”. In Colorado-ese, a “park” is simply a high-altitude meadow or treeless plain. In real life, South Park is a giant, high-elevation plain full of cattle surrounded by legions of snow-capped mountains - NOT a mountain town full of witty, potty-mouthed kids and their clueless parents (although Fairplay, CO, within South Park is indeed home to “South Park High School”). This weekend I went hiking in the mountains west of South Park, Colorado. So head on over to Scientific American, and check out my intro post, feel free to leave a comment there to say hi, and have a look around at the other wonderful bloggers we have lined up. This is my professional site and home of my portfolio, and it will continue to be so. I’ll be keeping this website as well, so check back in occasionally for new posts that don’t fit well at Sci Am or that may get reposted here in order to show off art. I haven’t forgotten about you guys, and I’ll still be doing what I’ve been doing for two years - only in a slightly different place. My first (and only the first) blog post will be on a schedule and won’t take place for well over a week, so don’t lose heart when you don’t hear from me for a while. I am very excited about this new opportunity and about the fantastic people I’ll be working with over there. Mariette DiChristina’s (Editor-in-Chief) welcome post is on the blog at: I am not sure if I’ll be able to simply transfer my old RSS feed over to this new one or not, but I’ll keep you updated on this if I find it is so.īora Zivkovic, our editor, has written a long post summarizing all the blogs (including mine) on the network (and there are about two dozen individual blogs and about 10 more editorial and group blogs) over at You can find my new blog here and my intro post here, with many more details on my new digs. Like all creatures, this blog is evolving. But someone made me an offer I couldn’t refuse and I have some fantastic news: my blog has been recruited by the new Scientific American blog network, which just launched this morning. It has been a joy blogging with you here over the last two and a quarter years. UPDATE: Feed link was previously incorrect.
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