Have you ever eaten a pine cone?

The timber-millers here called rimu trees Red Pines, and indeed rimu trees do have cones. But these are cones you can eat!

Like the northern world's pines and cedars, rimu trees are called gymno-sperms and thus have naked-seeds on their cones.

And all female cones, including rimu cones, have a central axis bearing seeds and scales.

Female pine cones are soft and red before pollination, but later they form hard woody scales to protect their wind-blown seeds.

      

 But the rimu cones stay soft, small and red, but with just one seed, so they can be swallowed by birds.

You can see them swelling up going from left to right below.
        
      

Birds' wings can carry rimu seeds much further than than the little wings on pine cone seeds, eh?

Rimu trees are classed as podo-carps (foot-fruit); and a row of rimu cones does look like the toes of a foot with dirty toenails, eh?


KIDS
Other Podocarps in this forest with similar cone-fruits that you can eat are totara and kahikatea. Use your Aotearoa Species app to identify them. But don't eat too many!                              

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