Cone Cutters

There are four or five species of white or 5-needle pine in western North America. The most famous, because it is currently imperiled, is the whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) of Idaho and Montana. The mountain pine beetle (MPB), a native pest, working together with white pine blister rust (WPBR), a non-native disease, has significantly reduced the population of whitebark pine across the northern Rockies. In southern Utah, we have two different, but closely related white pine species, the Great Basin bristlecone (Pinus longaeva) and the limber pine (Pinus flexilis). These species are also at risk from the double-whammy of MPB and WPBR, though WPBR has not yet arrived in our area.

In any case, I noticed earlier this summer, that our local 5-needle pines were having a good cone year—a real bumper crop. Because this only happens periodically, I called the regional plant geneticist to ask what we should do. She said, "Pick 'em." Collecting and storing seed allows us to grow seedlings to replant after natural disturbances and also allows us to isolate the seeds that are genetically resistant to WPBR. Because most of my favorite bristlecone grows outside my jurisdiction, so to speak, I decided to try harvesting limber pine cones.

You might think that collecting pine cones would be easy, but it isn't. First, there is a lot of competition out there. The squirrels will clean you out if you don't pick early, and the birds, while leaving the cones on the tree, will break the cone scales and steal the seeds. Second, the limber pine does not grow cones close to the ground, but prefers to put them at the top of the tree. Unless you intend to cut down the tree—which is a possibility in some cases—you have to find a way to harvest cones that are 20 to 40 feet in the air. The method we devised requires three people, the hooker, the cutter, and the bag man. The hooker finds a loaded branch, catches it, and bends it as far as possible; the cutter uses a pole pruner to snip the branch just inside the cluster of cones; and the bag man twists the cones from the cut branch. Voila.