I recently came across several Cook Island Pines in Oropesa del Mar (Spain) located along the beech. For some years I had been wanting to photograph the pollen cones of this tree species but the closest that I had come was to one tree with the pollen cones about 20 meters high at the top of the tree. This time I was lucky to have the pollen cones within my reach close to the ground (images above and below). One curious thing about these cones is that they grow at the terminal ends of of the long whorled leaves.
Almost all of these Cook Island Pines (Araucaria columnaris) showed the characteristic curved trunk like the one below. This is one of the best ways to distinguish the
Cook pines from their close cousins the Norfolk pines.
The image below is of the Cook pines seed cones which are about the size of softballs. One curious thing about these cones is that the seeds are incorporated into the scales. Each scale that falls to the ground contains a winged seed (see bottom image).
Other Araucarias in this blog...
