Pine cones can reveal a lot about the evolution of flowers, can you find a wooden rose?
There is a wonderful old tree at the Timaru Botanic Gardens near the entrance called Cedrus deodara. Its from the Himalayas and produces cones that look like wooden roses.
The cones are wrapped tightly into an egg shape. This is held together by turgor (water) pressure. as the water leaves the cone (i.e. the cones dry up or are roased by heat) it will unravel spirally often leaving the last few layers attached to the base of the cone. this looks like a single or wild rose.
Cones and flowers look completely different, but they have more similarities than you may think. They are both produced by trees and both generate seeds for reproduction.
From southern Africa's pineapple lily to Western Australia's swamp bottlebrush, flowering plants are everywhere. Also called angiosperms, they make up 90 percent of all land-based, plant life.
A flower with genetic programming similar to a water lily may have started it all thanks to an evolutionary innovation that quickly gave rise to many diverse flowering plants more than 130 million years ago. nsf.gov//news
