Tuesday, 8:15 AM. 56 degrees, wind N, light. The channel is lightly wrinkled, the sky blue with some high, hazy white clouds. The barometer predicts partly cloudy skies.
Confer cones can be quite as beautiful as flowers. The Colorado spruce in the front yard bears bright purple female cones several inches in length, and the tamarack little rose-bud-like cones the size of a fingernail.
Conifers are far more primitive than flowering plants, without floral parts or fruit (gymnosperm means naked seed). Conifers are basically wind pollinated, so they have no need to attract pollinators with bright, odoriferous flowers. And yet the cones are amazingly flower-like in appearance.
It is as if their form anticipates a yet-to-be determined function. Things evolve, usually over eons of time, and yet the future seems somehow ordained in the present. Just look closely at the cones of conifers; they are virtual flower wannabes.
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