February 21. This plucking and stripping a pine cone is a business which [the squirrel] and his family understand perfectly. That is their forte. I doubt if you could suggest any improvement.
After ages of experiment their instinct has settled on the same method that our reason would finally, if we had to open a pine cone with our teeth; and they were thus accomplished before our race knew that a pine cone contained any seed.
He does not prick his fingers, nor pitch his whiskers, nor gnaw the solid core any more than is necessary.
Having sheared off the twigs and needles that may be in his way, – for like a skillful woodchopper he first secures room and verge enough, – he neatly cuts off the stout stem of the cone with a few strokes of his chisels, and it is his.
To be sure, he may let it fall to the ground and look down at it for a moment curiously, as if it were not his; but he is taking note where it lies and adding it to a heap of a hundred more like it in his mind, and it now is only so much the more his for his seeming carelessness.
And, when the hour comes to open it, observe how he proceeds.
He holds it in his hands, – a solid embossed cone, so hard it almost rings at the touch of his teeth.
He pauses for a moment perhaps, – but not because he does not know how to begin, – he only listens to hear what is in the wind, not being in a hurry.
He knows better than try to cut off the tip and work his way downward against a chevaux-de-frise of advanced scales and prickles, or to gnaw into the side for three quarters of an inch in the face of many armed shields.
But he does not have to think of what he knows, having heard the latest æolian rumor.
If there ever was an age of the world when the squirrels opened their cones wrong end foremost, it was not the golden age at any rate.
He whirls the cone bottom upward in a twinkling, where the scales are smallest and the prickles slight or none and the short stem is cut so close as not to be in his way, and then he proceeds to cut through the thin and tender bases of the scales, and each stroke tells, laying bare at once a couple of seeds.
He whirls the cone bottom upward in a twinkling, where the scales are smallest and the prickles slight or none and the short stem is cut so close as not to be in his way, and then he proceeds to cut through the thin and tender bases of the scales that you cannot tell how he does it till you drive him off and inspect his unfinished work.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 21, 1861
February 22. Pitch pine cones must be taken from the tree at the right season, else they will not open or “blossom” in a chamber. I have one which was gnawed off by squirrels, apparently of full size, but which does not open. February 22, 1855
February 25. The white pine cones have been blowing off more or less in every high wind ever since the winter began, and yet perhaps they have not more than half fallen yet. February 25, 1860
February 27. Each scale, which is very elaborately and perfectly constructed, is armed with a short spine, pointing downward, as if to protect its seed from squirrels and birds. That hard closed cone, which defied all violent attempts to open it has thus yielded to the gentle persuasion of warmth and dryness. The expanding of the pine cones, that, too, is a season. February 27, 1853
February 28. I see twenty-four cones brought together under one pitch pine in a field, evidently gnawed off by a squirrel, but not opened. February 28, 1858
February 28. I take up a handsomely spread (or blossomed) pitch pine cone, but I find that a squirrel has begun to strip it first, having gnawed off a few of the scales at the base. The squirrel always begins to gnaw a cone thus at the base, as if it were a stringent law among the squirrel people, — as if the old squirrels taught the young ones a few simple rules like this. February 28, 1860
I see, in another place under a pitch pine, many cores of cones which the squirrels have completely stripped.
March 1. I see a pitch pine seed with its wing, far out on Walden.. March 1, 1856.
March 3. A few rods from the broad pitch pine beyond, I find a cone which was probably dropped by a squirrel in the fall, for I see the marks of its teeth where it was cut off; and it has probably been buried by the snow till now, for it has apparently just opened, and I shake its seeds out. Not only is this cone, resting upright on the ground, fully blossomed, a very beautiful object, but the winged seeds which half fill my hand, small triangular black seeds with thin and delicate flesh colored wings, remind me of fishes. I see, in another place under a pitch pine, many cores of cones which the squirrels have completely stripped of their scales, These you find left on and about stumps where they have sat, and under the pines. Most fallen pitch pine cones show the marks of squirrels’ teeth, showing they were cut off. March 3, 1855
March 6. Part of the pitch pine cones are yet closed. March 6, 1853
April 2. I find under one small pitch pine tree a heap of the cones which have been stripped of their scales, evidently by the red squirrels, the last winter and fall, they having sat upon some dead limbs above. They were all stripped regularly from the base upward, excepting the five to seven uppermost and barren scales, making a pretty figure. I counted two hundred and thirty-nine cones under this tree alone, and most of them lay within two feet square upon a mass of the scales one to two inches deep and three or four feet in diameter. There were also many cones under the surrounding pines. Those I counted would have made some three quarts or more. These had all been cut off by the squirrels and conveyed to this tree and there stripped and eaten. They appeared to have devoured all the fruit of that pitch pine grove, and probably it was they that nibbled the wintergreen. No fruit grows in vain. The red squirrel harvests the fruit of the pitch pine. His body is about the color of the cone. I should like to get his recipe for taking out pitch, for he must often get his chaps defiled, methinks. These were all fresh cones, the fruit of last year, perhaps. There was a hole in the ground where they lodged by that tree. April 2, 1859
April 19. As dryness will open the pitch pine cone, so moisture closes it up again. April 19, 1856
January 6. At every post along the brook-side, and under almost every white pine, the snow strewn with the scales and seeds of white pine cones left by the squirrels . . . To return to the squirrels, I saw where they had laid up a pitch pine cone in the fork of a rider in several places. January 6, 1854
January 8. All of the pitch pine cones that I see, but one, are open. January 8, 1856
January 13. Picked up a pitch pine cone which had evidently been cut off by a squirrel. The successive grooves made by his teeth while probably he bent it down were quite distinct. The woody stem was a quarter of an inch thick, and I counted eight strokes of his chisel. January 13, 1855
January 13. I see under some sizable white pines in E. Hubbard's wood, where red squirrels have run about much since this snow. They have run chiefly, perhaps, under the surface of the snow, so that it is very much under mined by their paths under these trees, and every now and then they have come to the surface, or the surface has fallen into their gallery. They seem to burrow under the snow about as readily as a meadow mouse. There are also paths raying out on every side from the base of the trees. And you see many holes through the snow into the ground where they now are, and other holes where they have probed for cones and nuts. The scales of the white pine cones are scattered about here and there. They seek a dry place to open them, — a fallen limb that rises above the snow, or often a lower dead stub projecting from the trunk of the tree. January 13, 1860
January 17. I look again at that place of squirrels (of the 13th). As I approach, I have a glimpse of one or two red squirrels gliding off silently along the branches of the pines, etc. They are gone so quickly and noiselessly, perhaps keeping the trunk of the tree between you and them, that [you] would not commonly suspect their presence if you were not looking for them. But one that was on the snow ascended a pine and sat on a bough with its back to the trunk as if there was nothing to pay. Yet when I moved again he scud up the tree, and glided across on some very slender twigs into a neigh boring tree, and so I lost him. Here is, apparently, a settlement of these red squirrels. There are many holes through the snow into the ground, and many more where they have probed and dug up a white pine cone, now pretty black and, for aught I can see, with abortive or empty seeds; yet they patiently strip them on the spot, or at the base of the trees, or at the entrance of their holes, and evidently find some good seed. The snow, however, is strewn with the empty and rejected seeds. They seem to select for their own abode a hillside where there are half a dozen rather large and thick white pines near enough together for their aerial travelling, and then they burrow numerous holes and depend on finding (apparently) the pine cones which they cast down in the summer, before they have opened. In the fall they construct a nest of grass and bark-fibres, moss, etc., in one of the trees for winter use, and so apparently have two resources. January 17, 1860
January 22. At Walden, near my old residence, I find that since I was here on the 11th, apparently within a day or two, some gray or red squirrel or squirrels have been feeding on the pitch pine cones extensively. The snow under one young pine is covered quite thick with the scales they have dropped while feeding overhead. I count the cores of thirty-four cones on the snow there, and that is not all. Under another pine there are more than twenty, and a well-worn track from this to a fence post three rods distant, under which are the cores of eight cones and a corresponding amount of scales. The track is like a very small rabbit. They have gnawed off the cones which were perfectly closed. I see where one has taken one of a pair and left the other partly off. He had first sheared off the needles that were in the way, and then gnawed off the sides or cheeks of the twig to come at the stem of the cone, which as usual was cut by successive cuts as with a knife, while bending it.
One or two small, perhaps dead, certainly unripe ones were taken off and left unopened. I find that many of those young pines are now full of unopened cones, which apparently will be two years old next summer, and these the squirrel now eats. There are also some of them open, perhaps on the most thrifty twigs. January 22, 1856
January 25. A closed pitch pine cone gathered January 22d opened last night in my chamber. If you would be convinced how differently armed the squirrel is naturally for dealing with pitch pine cones, just try to get one off with your teeth. He who extracts the seeds from a single closed cone with the aid of a knife will be constrained to confess that the squirrel earns his dinner. It is a rugged customer, and will make your fingers bleed. But the squirrel has the key to this conical and spiny chest of many apartments. He sits on a post, vibrating his tail, and twirls it as a plaything. January 25, 1856
March 3. A few rods from the broad pitch pine beyond, I find a cone which was probably dropped by a squirrel in the fall, for I see the marks of its teeth where it was cut off; and it has probably been buried by the snow till now, for it has apparently just opened, and I shake its seeds out. Not only is this cone, resting upright on the ground, fully blossomed, a very beautiful object, but the winged seeds which half fill my hand, small triangular black seeds with thin and delicate flesh colored wings, remind me of fishes. I see, in another place under a pitch pine, many cores of cones which the squirrels have completely stripped of their scales, These you find left on and about stumps where they have sat, and under the pines. Most fallen pitch pine cones show the marks of squirrels’ teeth, showing they were cut off. March 3, 1855
March 5. White pine cones half fallen. March 5, 1860
March 6. Part of the pitch pine cones are yet closed. March 6, 1853
March 7. Picked up a very handsome white pine cone some six and a half inches long by two and three eighths near base and two near apex, perfectly blossomed. It is a very rich and wholesome brown color, of various shades as you turn it in your hand, —a light ashy or gray brown, somewhat like unpainted wood. as you look down on it, or as if the lighter brown were covered with a gray lichen, seeing only those parts of the scales always exposed, —with a few darker streaks or marks and a drop of pitch at the point of each scale. Within, the scales are a dark brown above (i.e. as it hangs) and a light brown beneath, Very distinctly being marked beneath by the same darker brown, down the centre and near the apex somewhat anchor wise. March 7, 1855
March 21. I see several white pine cones in the path by Wheildon's which appear to have fallen in the late strong winds, but perhaps the ice in the winter took them off. Others still hold on. March 21, 1859
April 2. I find under one small pitch pine tree a heap of the cones which have been stripped of their scales, evidently by the red squirrels, the last winter and fall, they having sat upon some dead limbs above. They were all stripped regularly from the base upward, excepting the five to seven uppermost and barren scales, making a pretty figure. I counted two hundred and thirty-nine cones under this tree alone, and most of them lay within two feet square upon a mass of the scales one to two inches deep and three or four feet in diameter. There were also many cones under the surrounding pines. Those I counted would have made some three quarts or more. These had all been cut off by the squirrels and conveyed to this tree and there stripped and eaten. They appeared to have devoured all the fruit of that pitch pine grove, and probably it was they that nibbled the wintergreen. No fruit grows in vain. The red squirrel harvests the fruit of the pitch pine. His body is about the color of the cone. I should like to get his recipe for taking out pitch, for he must often get his chaps defiled, methinks. These were all fresh cones, the fruit of last year, perhaps. There was a hole in the ground where they lodged by that tree. April 2, 1859
April 19. As dryness will open the pitch pine cone, so moisture closes it up again. April 19, 1856
June 25. I am too late for the white pine flowers. The cones are half an inch long and greenish, and the male flowers effete. June 25, 1852
September 24. I walk to that very dense and handsome white pine grove east of Beck Stow’s Swamp . . . The ground was completely strewn with white pine cones, apparently thrown down by the squirrels, still generally green and closed, but many stripped of scales, about the base of almost every pine, sometimes all of them. Now and for a week a good time to collect them. You can hardly enter such a wood but you will hear a red squirrel chiding you from his concealment in some pine-top. It is the sound most native to the locality. September 24, 1857
November 14. It is a general and sudden bursting or expanding of all the scales with a sharp crackling sound and motion of the whole cone, as by a force pent up within it. I suppose the strain only needed to be relieved in one point for the whole to go off..November 14, 1855
November 20. the whole cone opens its scales with a smart crackling. November 20, 1855
September 1.Green white pine cones are thrown down. An unusual quantity of these have been stripped for some time past, and I see the ground about the bases of the trees strewn with them. September 1, 1859
September 9. Wednesday. P. M. – To the Hill for white pine cones. Very few trees have any. I can only manage small ones, fifteen or twenty feet high, climbing till I can reach the dangling green pickle-like fruit in my right hand, while I hold to the main stem with my left. The cones are now all flowing with pitch, and my hands are soon so covered with it that I cannot easily cast down the cones where I would, they stick to my hands so. I cannot touch the basket, but carry it on my arm; nor can I pick up my coat, which I have taken off, un less with my teeth, or else I kick it up and catch it on my arm. Thus I go from tree to tree, from time to time rubbing my hands in brooks and mud-holes, in the hope of finding something that will remove pitch like grease, but in vain. It is the stickiest work I ever did. I do not see how the squirrels that gnaw them off and then open them scale by scale keep their paws and whiskers clean. They must know of, or possess, some remedy for pitch that we know nothing of. How fast I could collect cones, if I could only contract with a family of squirrels to cut them off for me! Some are already brown and dry and partly open, but these commonly have hollow seeds and are worm-eaten. The cones collected in my chamber have a strong spirituous scent, almost rummy, or like a molasses hogshead, agreeable to some. September 9, 1857
September 16. I see green and closed cones beneath, which the squirrels have thrown down. On the trees many are already open. Say within a week have begun. In one small wood, all the white pine cones are on the ground, generally unopened, evidently freshly thrown down by the squirrels, and then the greater part have already been stripped. They begin at the base of the cone, as with the pitch pine. It is evident that they have just been very busy throwing down the white pine cones in all woods. Perhaps they have stored up the seeds separately. September 16, 1858
September 18. There is an abundant crop of cones on the white pines this year, and they are now for the most part brown and open. The tops of the high trees for six or ten feet downward are quite browned with them, hanging straight downward. It is worth a long walk to look from some favorable point over a pine forest whose tops are thus covered with the brown cones just opened, — from which the winged seeds have fallen or are ready to fall. How little observed are the fruits which we do not use! How few attend to the ripening and dispersion of the pine seed! September 18, 1859
September 18. White pine cones (a small crop), and all open that I see. [Are they not last year's ?] September 18, 1860
September 24. I walk to that very dense and handsome white pine grove east of Beck Stow’s Swamp . . . The ground was completely strewn with white pine cones, apparently thrown down by the squirrels, still generally green and closed, but many stripped of scales, about the base of almost every pine, sometimes all of them. Now and for a week a good time to collect them. You can hardly enter such a wood but you will hear a red squirrel chiding you from his concealment in some pine-top. It is the sound most native to the locality. September 24, 1857
October 6. Going through Ebby Hubbard's woods, I see thousands of white pine cones on the ground, fresh light brown, which lately opened and shed their seeds and lie curled up on the ground. The seeds are rather pleasant or nutritious tasting, taken in quantity, like beech nuts, methinks. October 6, 1857
October 8. At length I discover some white pine cones, a few, on Emerson Heater Piece trees. They are all open, and the seeds, all the sound ones but one, gone. So September is the time to gather them. The tip of each scale is covered with fresh flowing pitch. October 8, 1856
October 13. So far as I have observed, if pines or oaks bear abundantly one year they bear little or nothing the next year. This year, so far as I observe, there are scarcely any white pine cones. October 13, 1860
October 19. I see at last a few white pine cones open on the trees, but almost all appear to have fallen. October 19, 1855
November 3. I see many white pine cones fallen and open, with a few seeds still in them. November 3, 1853
November 4. I have failed to find white pine seed this year, though I began to look for it a month ago. The cones were fallen and open. Look the first of September. November 4, 1855
November 14. It is a general and sudden bursting or expanding of all the scales with a sharp crackling sound and motion of the whole cone, as by a force pent up within it. I suppose the strain only needed to be relieved in one point for the whole to go off..November 14, 1855
November 20. the whole cone opens its scales with a smart crackling. November 20, 1855
December 8. I visit the door of many a squirrel’s burrow, and see his nutshells and cone-scales and tracks in the sand, but a snow would reveal much more. December 8, 1855
December 17. The snow being some three or four inches deep, . . .You see many places where they [squirrels] have probed the snow for these white pine cones, evidently those which they cut off green and which accordingly have not opened so as to drop the seeds. This was perhaps the design in cutting them off so early, — thus to preserve them under the snow (not dispersed). . December 17, 1859
January 8. All of the pitch pine cones that I see, but one, are open. January 8, 1856
January 13. Picked up a pitch pine cone which had evidently been cut off by a squirrel. The successive grooves made by his teeth while probably he bent it down were quite distinct. The woody stem was a quarter of an inch thick, and I counted eight strokes of his chisel. January 13, 1855
January 13. I see under some sizable white pines in E. Hubbard's wood, where red squirrels have run about much since this snow. They have run chiefly, perhaps, under the surface of the snow, so that it is very much under mined by their paths under these trees, and every now and then they have come to the surface, or the surface has fallen into their gallery. They seem to burrow under the snow about as readily as a meadow mouse. There are also paths raying out on every side from the base of the trees. And you see many holes through the snow into the ground where they now are, and other holes where they have probed for cones and nuts. The scales of the white pine cones are scattered about here and there. They seek a dry place to open them, — a fallen limb that rises above the snow, or often a lower dead stub projecting from the trunk of the tree. January 13, 1860
January 17. I look again at that place of squirrels (of the 13th). As I approach, I have a glimpse of one or two red squirrels gliding off silently along the branches of the pines, etc. They are gone so quickly and noiselessly, perhaps keeping the trunk of the tree between you and them, that [you] would not commonly suspect their presence if you were not looking for them. But one that was on the snow ascended a pine and sat on a bough with its back to the trunk as if there was nothing to pay. Yet when I moved again he scud up the tree, and glided across on some very slender twigs into a neigh boring tree, and so I lost him. Here is, apparently, a settlement of these red squirrels. There are many holes through the snow into the ground, and many more where they have probed and dug up a white pine cone, now pretty black and, for aught I can see, with abortive or empty seeds; yet they patiently strip them on the spot, or at the base of the trees, or at the entrance of their holes, and evidently find some good seed. The snow, however, is strewn with the empty and rejected seeds. They seem to select for their own abode a hillside where there are half a dozen rather large and thick white pines near enough together for their aerial travelling, and then they burrow numerous holes and depend on finding (apparently) the pine cones which they cast down in the summer, before they have opened. In the fall they construct a nest of grass and bark-fibres, moss, etc., in one of the trees for winter use, and so apparently have two resources. January 17, 1860
January 22. At Walden, near my old residence, I find that since I was here on the 11th, apparently within a day or two, some gray or red squirrel or squirrels have been feeding on the pitch pine cones extensively. The snow under one young pine is covered quite thick with the scales they have dropped while feeding overhead. I count the cores of thirty-four cones on the snow there, and that is not all. Under another pine there are more than twenty, and a well-worn track from this to a fence post three rods distant, under which are the cores of eight cones and a corresponding amount of scales. The track is like a very small rabbit. They have gnawed off the cones which were perfectly closed. I see where one has taken one of a pair and left the other partly off. He had first sheared off the needles that were in the way, and then gnawed off the sides or cheeks of the twig to come at the stem of the cone, which as usual was cut by successive cuts as with a knife, while bending it.
One or two small, perhaps dead, certainly unripe ones were taken off and left unopened. I find that many of those young pines are now full of unopened cones, which apparently will be two years old next summer, and these the squirrel now eats. There are also some of them open, perhaps on the most thrifty twigs. January 22, 1856
January 23. I see where the squirrels have torn the pine cones in pieces to come at their seeds. And in some cases the mice have nibbled the buds of the pitch pines, where the plumes have been bent down by the snow. January 23, 1852
January 25. A closed pitch pine cone gathered January 22d opened last night in my chamber. If you would be convinced how differently armed the squirrel is naturally for dealing with pitch pine cones, just try to get one off with your teeth. He who extracts the seeds from a single closed cone with the aid of a knife will be constrained to confess that the squirrel earns his dinner. It is a rugged customer, and will make your fingers bleed. But the squirrel has the key to this conical and spiny chest of many apartments. He sits on a post, vibrating his tail, and twirls it as a plaything. January 25, 1856
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Plucking and Stripping a Pine Cone.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024
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