April 10 2006. In a thought experiment about the recently floated large pin cones, I wondered whether the closure of previously dry scales on the tree, ground or upper beach will trap indications of their source when stranded or sunk in the sea. On the 8th I collected two smaller cones of Pinus nigra Arnold from the grass, which was dry enough for the scales to be open. I floated them in a box of sea-water containing reed stem fragments not yet sunk after being collected from the strandline and refloated a day later on March 26. As expected the scales have now closed trapping about 20 of the mm diameter stems largely in a roughly axial orientation and one plane, but with a few held transverse to the cone or hanging below the water line.


Last night it rained and so I revisited the same tree at sunrise before the scales could dry. It was disconcerting to find an adult starling lying with contracted legs and open bill dead on the pavement (American sidewalk). I buried it in the garden as probably the best response with Scottish bird flu still in the papers. It is unclear whether it would have seen the light of day again before entering a landfill site if placed in the black garbage sacks being collected early this morning.

The pine tree showed all of the scales on previously fallen cones now closed and a few fallen on to the pavement were slightly open. Five were collected and floated in sea-water, three being clean, one showed winged seeds projecting out of the scales and one had two paired pine needles (50x80 mm long). They were firmly held transverse to the cone axis on the lower plane near the grass. One of them had degraded when on the grass during a relatively dry winter with little frost into the same texture of blocky split scales and projecting originally internal spines seen on the cone stranded at Chalkwell last week. In that case the fibres were rather like the claws of a cat and in P. nigra they are evidently more straight and softer. In both cases these more degraded types of cone did not close tightly enough to trap pine needles and may have lost their seeds while still on the tree.

In looking at the two large cones floating in sea-water one can see that where the picked one contained thin winged seeds (near the base) the closure of the scales has produced tight sutures, but elsewhere there is much space and distortion between them. The previously drifted cone contains some marine debris between these wide spaces between the scales but it is not tightly held like reeds adjacent to a cone which fell into the sea. Illustrations of cones from the Dutch coast (as drawings, which may have omitted damaged areas) show none of the axial cracking of the scales and exposure of their internal fibrous structure seen on the drifted cone from Chalkwell. Damage from being stranded by a rough sea, or even being in the open North Sea for weeks, is therefore unlikely to explain the poor preservation of the scales. It is less easy to exclude damage from grey squirrels and general decay while these larger types of pinecones are still on the tree as a possible cause. If the Chalkwell Cone is from a Knobcone Pine then someone living from California to Oregon could investigate the stages of disintegration on and below the trees in their own habitat. If these deductions are correct then it is unlikely that the Chalkwell cone was imported from there as an impressive dried ornament thrown into the Thames recently. A botanist (not me) might be able to formally determine the species and where it grows as introduced specimens in Europe. However, botanists, like squirrels, tend to dissect cones, and it would be nice to see how long it floats for compared to the similar sized picked cone and the dry or wet smaller fallen cones.