Name these pine cones?

Last year I bought a box of garden doodads from a lady who was downsizing and among other interesting items it contained these two giant pine cones. I have not been able to figure out what they are.

Anyone recognize these? In lieu of a species identification I would settle for some good pine cone names.

They are probably one of the ones mentioned here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulter_pine

The Coulter pine is closely related to the foothill pine, Pinus sabiniana. It is more distantly related to Jeffrey pine with which it shares habitats, and the ponderosa pine.[

Anne Miller wrote:They are probably one of the ones mentioned here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulter_pine

The Coulter pine is closely related to the foothill pine, Pinus sabiniana. It is more distantly related to Jeffrey pine with which it shares habitats, and the ponderosa pine.[

Thanks, Anne! That does look like the cone. So, big-cone pine, eh. I wonder why that didn't come up when I was googling pines with big cones and that sort of thing. LOL.

One of the citations in the wikipedia link goes to an older book about pines of Britain (this California native had some arboretum specimens planted there) and states that the native people used to eat the seeds extensively. Which makes sense; as far as I know all pine seeds are edible, and these look fairly large from the photographs I found.

I think I will dismantle the more beat-up cone and see if by chance there are any seeds in there that I can try to plant. I imagine most of the seeds will have fallen out when the cone opened, or at least that's the way it should have worked. Worth checking anyway.

When I was a kid we had some big pine cones like yours.  I remember asking my mom where they came from.

We took a trip to California when I was six which is where she said they came from.  

The term I used to search was "what trees grow the largest cones" or something like that because I thought maybe other trees might make cones, not just pines.  I was thinking maybe redwood though the search said pines.

It's true, some people use 'pine cone' to refer to any kind of conifer cone (not me, but you didn't know that!). So I think it was reasonable of you to consider all conifer cones. Clearly that was a good approach, since it worked! I had been wracking my brains over this identification, not knowing where in the world these cones had originated.

In the worst case scenario, I figured someone would come up with an entertaining pair of names. I had been thinking of them as Tom and Jerry. No idea why. Can't tell you which is which.

About the redwoods and their cones -There's an old arboretum on the outskirts of Nanaimo BC that was established by one of the logging companies, in the 1950s I believe. They have some good-sized redwood/sequoia specimens (although I suppose only babies as they were not much bigger than a regular mature tall conifer) and I was really shocked how small the cones were - only about an inch. I picked up some fallen giant sequoia cones one time I was there, and tried to germinate them, but no success. Since then I've bought a couple of small seedlings from a mail order nursery and they are growing like crazy in large plant bags and are soon to be planted out at our new place. As the crow flies the arboretum is actually quite close to our place, so I know the climate is compatible.

If I can find and germinate any seeds of the big-cone pine, I'm hoping it would also like our climate in south-coastal BC. From what I've quickly learned of its distribution, it seems to be a mountain tree in California so maybe adapted to semi-cold winter temperatures, and that old book I looked at online referenced several specimens growing in England and Ireland which have a similar climate to ours.

I don't think these are Coulter pine cones. Coulter cones are painful to hold in your hand- they are covered with large  prickles. They're also very beefy looking and extremely heavy.

I'm not sure what they are, though! Try looking up Jeffrey Pine cones. They can get as large as what you have pictured, and they don't hurt your hands when picked up (the prickles face inward). They grow in higher, wetter mountainous habitats than Coulter.

Andrea Locke wrote:Last year I bought a box of garden doodads from a lady who was downsizing and among other interesting items it contained these two giant pine cones. I have not been able to figure out what they are.

Anyone recognize these? In lieu of a species identification I would settle for some good pine cone names.

Andrea, in the spirit of being helpful, I hereby name these pine cones Heidi and Greg.

Brian
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Melissa Sullivan wrote:I don't think these are Coulter pine cones. Coulter cones are painful to hold in your hand- they are covered with large  prickles. They're also very beefy looking and extremely heavy.

I'm not sure what they are, though! Try looking up Jeffrey Pine cones. They can get as large as what you have pictured, and they don't hurt your hands when picked up (the prickles face inward). They grow in higher, wetter mountainous habitats than Coulter.

Well, these don't hurt my hands and are quite light in weight. I looked at the photo of Jeffrey pine cones and they do look like what I have. It appears Jeffery and Coulter pines are closely related and hybridize often in nature. Both occur in California.

So at this point I'm inclined to think they are Jeffrey pines, or just possibly a Jeffrey x Coulter hybrid. Most parsimonious solution is probably to assume they are Jeffrey though, since I assume non-hybridized is probably more common than hybridized.

In terms of potentially getting them to grow in southern BC, assuming I manage to find any viable seeds once I dismantle the less intact cone, I think Jeffrey is probably more northern in its distribution so that would be a positive.

Brian Cady wrote:

Andrea Locke wrote:Last year I bought a box of garden doodads from a lady who was downsizing and among other interesting items it contained these two giant pine cones. I have not been able to figure out what they are.

Anyone recognize these? In lieu of a species identification I would settle for some good pine cone names.

Andrea, in the spirit of being helpful, I hereby name these pine cones Heidi and Greg.

Brian
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Thank you Brian! Very helpful.

I think you’re on the right track.  If they came from the US east coast, I would say Longneedle or Loblolly.  Those are on the small end of cones I have in my backyard in WV from loblolly.
And they volunteer sprout fairly readily.  But never when or where you want.  I’ve been trying to encourage closed cones to open and sprout since fall.  Giving them soil, moisture and visits to the freezer.  Still nothing.

My names suggestion is Pete and Repete.

Jeffrey pine (Pinus jeffreyi)

But they dont grow in BC, only up to southwest Oregon.