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Tree Family Pinaceae: The Pines, Cedars, Spruce, and Firs The Pine family is the most varied of all the groups of trees that bear cones (conifers). Pinaceae contains more than 250 species, all of which are native to the Northern Hemisphere. They all have woody cones with spirally arranged scales and linear or flat leaves, commonly called needles. The oldest tree on earth is a (clone) spruce growing on Fulu Mountain in Sweden, nearly 10,000 years old. Please select a thumbnail for more and larger images and information on each species. |
 Pinus resinosa Red Pine |
 Globe Blue Spruce Picea pungens |
 Eastern White Pine Pinus strobus |
 Nordmann Fir Abies nordmanniana |
 Needle Fir Abies holophylla |
 Manchurian Fir Abies nephrolepis |
 Ponderosa Pine Pinus ponderosa |
 Balsam Fir Abies balsamea |
 Douglas-Fir var. glauca |
 Douglas-Fir Pseudotsuga menziesii |
| Conifer comes from the Latin for "cone bearing." A conifer's seeds are borne in its cones. If you were to shake a typical mature cone, seeds would fall out. Almost all plants on earth produce seeds, and these plants are divided into two categories: gymnosperms and angiosperms. The angiosperms have their seeds embedded inside fruit; think of an apple or a pumpkin. Angiosperms comprise, by far, the biggest of the two groups. "Gymnosperm", on the other hand, is Latin for "naked seed" (in ancient Greece, gymnasiums were places where people ran around naked). Gymnosperms evolved before flowering plants, and conifers (all plants in Pinaceae are conifers) are gymnosperms. There are fewer than 1,000 species of gymnosperms, representing barely 1/2 of one percent of all plant species. |
 Koyama Spruce Picea koyamae |
 White Fir Abies concolor |
 European Larch Larix dicidua |
 Eastern Hemlock Tsuga canadensis |
 Norway Spruce Picea abies |
| A mature, fertilized female cone may be
thought of as "fruit" (although technically conifers do not
"flower" and hence cannot bear fruit). In most conifers, the
cones are woody structures, but by no means do they all look
like the classic pinecone. Some have seeds enveloped in a fleshy
coating. Separate male cones are called staminate; they
often take the form of tiny cones or catkins; these provide the
pollen to fertilize the female cones, which ultimately produce
the seeds. The female cones are the familiar woody structures
and they are called pistillate cones. Most species of
conifer are monocecious: they have both male and female
cones on the same tree.
Pollination in conifers is always dependant on wind to transfer the pollen from staminate to pistillate structures. |
 Himalayan White Pine Pinus wallachiana |
 Serbian Spruce Picea omorika |
 Dragon Spruce Picea asperata |
 European Silver Fir Abies alba |
 Olga Bay Larch Larix gmelinii var. olgensis |
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The oldest tree: Sometime around 7542 B.C.,
a spruce tree started growing on Fulu Mountain in Sweden. It
is still growing. Spruce trees can produce exact clones of
each other, and while the currently visible part of the tree
is not 9,550 years old, scientists found pieces of wood
beneath it that are that old with exactly the same genetic
makeup as the above-ground part of the tree.
|
 Fremd Eastern Hemlock Tsuga canadensis 'Fremdii' |
 Limber Pine Pinus flexilis |
 Subalpine Fir Abies lasiocarpa |
 Mugo Pine Pinus mugo |
 Table Mountain Pine Pinus pungens |
