We just counted the number of cones on a single ten- foot Fraser Fir Christmas tree.  How many do you think there were on one tree? 

We counted 450 cones and I kid you not!  In this one particular field of 2000 8′-12′ trees, it took 15 workers 3 days to pick the cones off the trees.  This is a yearly chore that the older, bigger trees present us with each and every spring.  This spring the crop of cones was huge. 

There has been a lot of speculation as to what stimulates cone production in Fraser Fir.  I have read that the trees alternate years between light and heavy crops.   Environmental conditions, drought, bad soil, bad nutrition also seem to stimulate cone production.  The tree gets the message that it might not survive so it better do everything it can to reproduce.   I do not know exactly what the psychology of the trees was this year or what the cone production says about their mental state.  Maybe they felt the economic crisis, recession and the pending disaster coming and they responded in kind but it has been a lot of work cleaning up their panic. We did have a harder winter than in recent years, with more snow and colder weather. That is predicted again for this winter, so we can check that theory out next spring.

One of the cone questions we ask every year at this time is, “How did the cones on Roan Mountain do? Are there a lot of cones?  Did the cones get frozen out by a late freeze?”  This year we had several nights in mid - May where the temperature got down to 27 degrees at my home, which is at 3600’ elevation.   The temperature could easily have been 10 degrees lower in the Fraser Fir stands and groves on top of Roan Mountain, at 6,000’ in elevation.  But then, because of the elevation there, the trees are delayed in their growth and are not at a vulnerable stage of growth.   Bottom line is that I do not know how the cones on Roan Mountain fared this past winter, but there is a good possibility that there will be a huge crop of seed that will be ripe to pick come September 1.  

 In the meantime, if you are growing Fraser Fir trees, do not forget to pick your cones.  They inhibit the development of Fraser Fir foliage and must be picked if you want to produce a top quality tree.