Sugar cones

Yesterday was Epiphany, the 12th day of Christmas celebrating the visit of the wise men to the Christ Child.  In the olden days, it was the time to take down and burn the Christmas greens.

"Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and mistletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all,
Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas Hall."

Robert Herrick 1591-1674

There is nothing left of Christmas here except for candy and these pretty remnants on the dining room table.  I bought the big pine cones at the hardware store for $2 and those simple things were so naturally beautiful amid all the plastic and tinsel of December.   They come from pinus lambertiana, known as the sugar pine tree, the tallest pine with the longest cones of any conifer. They are second only to Sequoias in the total volume of wood.

Those giant cones weigh down the ends of the branches. The tree is native to the mountains of the Pacific coast of North America, and the tallest ever recorded was "Yosemite Giant," a 269 ft tall tree in Yosemite National Park which died from bark beetle attack in 2007. I might have seen this wonder when I was there in the 1970's, and it makes me sad I can't remember it.   The sugar pine has been badly affected by a fungus called white pine blister rust but conservationists are trying to replant resistant strains. They can live for over a thousand years.

The Native Americans harvested the tiny seeds and ate the sugary sap from cuts on the trunk. The naturalist John Muir called the sugar pine to the "king of conifers" and thought the syrup was preferable to Vermont maple on his flapjacks.