Vegetative and reproductive growth of black pine

Black pine is a shorter variety of all pine trees, entering the first flowering period at three years of age, and beginning the transformation from vegetative growth to reproductive growth. This is much shorter than Huashan pine (8 to 11 years) and Korean pine (12 to 15 years), due to the nutrient shunting of reproductive growth, it will lead to relatively slow vegetative growth of the tree, so it is particularly important to understand the flowering and fruiting rules of black pine to improve the rapid growth of black pine.

Black pine is gymnosperms, hermaphroditic plants, a tree has both female flowers and male flowers, and the angiosperm is different from the female flowers of the black pine for no cover flowers, its ovules are bare, more interesting is that its female flower development is cross-annual, that is, in the first summer to form a primitive body, the second year spring flowering, pollination, we now go to the ground to observe the pine tree, you can see the new sprout next to the new bud at the top of the new slightly, this small ball is the pollinated small coccidiform, the third spring (13 months after pollination) fertilization, It begins to develop rapidly, and in the autumn it matures, forming our common pine bulbs.

The male flowers of black pine are born in the middle and lower parts of the canopy, and its development cycle spans a year, starting from June to July of each year, forming on the top buds of the new branches, and the male bulbous protoplasms appear on the top of the new slightly longer in October, however, the male flower shape is very small at this time, tightly wrapped in the bracts, and in the spring of the second year, its form develops rapidly, the bracts are cracked, revealing the male flower balls, the flower bulbs are yellow, at this time, the male flower bulbs expand rapidly, the color is further yellowed, and in early and mid-April, it reaches full maturity and begins to flower powder, The amount of pollen of black pine is very large, and when it is loose, it is like a yellow smoke fluttering in the air when it is blown by the wind, which is spectacular.

The sexual reproduction of black pine is determined by its biological characteristics, but for us to cultivate black pine, this is a disadvantage, because its reproductive growth to consume a lot of nutrients, affecting the vegetative growth of trees, therefore, we must be artificial intervention, the nutritional consumption of its reproductive growth to the minimum, the specific practice is to remove the developing pine balls in a timely manner, the earlier the better, especially in the first winter and the second year of the early spring to remove the small cones that have not been inseminated, this period not only the bulb absorbs less nutrients, but also saves effort, It is much less laborious to use a finger to fall off than picking a large pine ball.