I have two lovely old Douglas Fir trees in my back yard that produce and drop a staggering number of cones every year, which I have to rake. I’ve heard that Douglas Fir makes an excellent bonsai tree, and so I thought I’d do a little lemons-out-of-lemonade thing here and plant a few seedlings from my trees as part of my up and coming bonsai collection.
But, well, I have the cones, but I don’t actually know which part is the seed. Or if the seed is still in the cone or what.
Can anyone help? How do I identify and/or find seeds from my trees? Should I look on the ground? Cut open some cones?
By the time the cone falls, the seeds probably have been dispersed. If you catch them fresh, there may still be some in them. They are inside the cone, but the cones in the ground are usually dessicated and bereft of seeds, unless you pick them up freshly fallen.
Pantellerite’s site says, “you will need to harvest mature cones from the tree.” Bugger. The lowest branch is about 40 feet up. I guess I should have done this before I had those low branches removed.
Does anyone know, could I find seeds on the ground near the tree? Should I shake the tree really hard? Throw a football at the upper branches? Hire a foolhardy soul to climb the tree and fetch me some cones?
The seeds are under the scales of the cone, and some kinds at least look a bit like half a maple-tree key, with one small papery wing. As long as not all the scales have lifted, there are probably still seeds inside. Collect a few cones and let them dry until the scales lift (or pry them up), then shake or tap the seeds out. Or look around the tree for loose seeds.
According to this site, Douglas fir cones and seeds don’t take the heat like some pines.
I’ve seen seeds in pine cones lying on the ground that I easily extracted from the scales by hand alone. I believe they were loblolly pines, but they could have been any other pine.