Colossal Cones
Surrounded by trees extending almost three hundred feet straight up, I had an understandable urge to look skyward as we wandered through the Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park. Fortunately, a young boy showed me what was lying right at my feet: giant sequoia cones!
Winter winds blow pollen from the sequoias’ lower branches up to the female cones congregating the trees’ crowns. Naturally occurring lightening fires eventually dry out the mature cones, releasing as many as two hundred seeds per cone and allowing the life cycle to roll around another time.
The trees themselves disappear to almost unfathomable heights from the ground below. The child to cone size comparison provided a more tangible illustration of “gigantic”.
