...And strange things falling from the heights

 On the same walk around Loch Imrich, I came across a lot of unfamiliar cones on the ground.  Well, to be more exact, half cones.

Half a large cone amongst smaller larch cones

They were large - the half cone was about 2 inches (10 cm) long and quite solid and heavy. The broken surface was a startling pink.

The other end of the cone was sticky with a blob of resin oozing from the centre.

The side of the cone  was green and each section had a sharp tail poking out.

As I only had half a cone, I was not sure whether I had a top or a bottom half. Looking around, all the half cones on the ground looked similar and I could not find a matching half to make a complete cone.

I had never seen cones like this before, so I looked around to see what trees were nearby. There were the usual Birch and Rowan, but the only conifer was a very tall one with a grey trunk. The trunk was covered with blisters, some of which were weeping resin.

I looked up but could hardly see the top of the tree and the photo I took is very poor but it did tell me that there were big cones at the top and they were pointing up. (Whether the cones point up or hang down can be a useful characteristic when trying to identify a conifer.) 

The cones are the pale green blobs in the blown up section 

Having collected as much information as I could, I took a couple of half cones home. A young girl came to see what I was doing and was very taken with the cones and started stuffing them in her pockets.  I did warn her that they were quite sticky! As I was walking the dog, I had a handy plastic poo bag to put them in.

Now I wanted to get an ID. There are plenty of keys for identifying conifers, but they often ask you about the buds and needles and there were none within reach. I had once done a workshop with conifer expert Matt Parratt and he gave us a useful sheet on Silver Firs. Here's a quote:

"Cones are always upright on the branches, usually right at the top of the tree, and they disintegrate in situ leaving a central core.  For this reason cone characters are not easily observable but looking for shed cone scales beneath the tree and using binoculars can be helpful."

Unusually, the cones had broken and fallen - high winds? Very dry weather?  I decided the tree was a Noble Fir (Abies procera - though it  can also be called Abies nobilis which is easier to remember) which has huge cones. Did I have a top or a bottom of the cone? Looking at pictures of Noble Fir cones, the sharp green points point downwards on the cone so the halves that had fallen were all tops, which makes sense if the cones had broken in half on the tree.

I was able to detach one of the cone scales. The seed is at the bottom and the green "tail" is on a separate joined flap (bract) which I have folded back in the right-hand picture.

There is a YouTube video by Matt Parratt on identifying conifers. 

Introduction to Conifer ID

 He talks about and shows pictures of Noble Fir cones around 32 minutes into the video if you want  to hear from the expert. The video is on the BSBI channel and there are lots more botanical presentations there.

Update

I managed to get a better picture of the upright cones on the tree today:

Update: October 2022.  The tree has been chopped down! But there are plenty more Noble firs in front of the Highlander Hotel in Newtonmore.