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Make Mine Pine

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Today’s post comes from Dr. Larry Kyle, the company founder and produce manager at Genway – a supermarket for genetically engineered foods.

I’m delighted that scientists who have more time on their hands than I do were finally able to sequence the entire super-lengthy genome for the Norway Spruce.

I tried to do it a time or two, but the Norway Spruce DNA string was so long I lost interest before I got to the end, rather like reading Moby Dick.

There was a lot of repetition in the genome too. I guess that’s what used to pass for great writing.

It’s odd, because Norway Spruce might be my closest personality match in the world of trees. They can be so prickly! They’re also sappy and messy, just like I am. And of course we both smell great and people want to snuggle up near us and hang things off of us every December. That’s why I’ve always wanted to do something coniferous at Genway! And now that I can get at all the genetic inner workings and mess around, my mind is reeling!

Of course everyone else will use this wealth of new information to try to make a perfectly shaped and completely durable Christmas Tree. Ho hum! I’m much more interested in the subtle manipulations.

For example, by incorporating simple Idaho tuber DNA into a cocktail with the genetic code for creating pine needles, I can clearly envision a house in the woods surrounded by trees that shed the raw materials for making ultra-thin potato sticks. So what if dropping spud-needles get caught in the gutters? Spray the roof with oil and set it on fire! Those first responders deserve to arrive at a blaze one time that i also a tasty, crunchy treat – just remind them to bring the salt cannon!

And what about doing something with those Norway Spruce seed pods? Imagine how a nine year old’s head would explode if you told him Ice Cream Cones really DO grow on trees! Now THERE’S a Christmas gift!

There are non-grocery applications too! Those pine-shaped hang-from-the-mirror car deodorizers have never smelled like an evergreen to me. But now that we know the proper DNA sequence, we can fundamentally spruce up everything! The dashboard. The mirror itself. Even YOU could have a naturally coniferous personal scent! What would it be worth to you to be as perpetually fresh as mountain air?

And what about sports applications? I’m sure there are a number of NFL receivers who would like a genetic upgrade to have their football-dropping palms naturally ooze an ultra sticky sap.

Yes, I’m delighted that the secrets of this complicated tree, the Norway Spruce, have finally been unlocked. Look for a sudden surge of Evergreen products at Genway including Evergreen Grapes and Evergreen Gravy.

Yes, green gravy! Why? Because we can!

Yours in Unsupervised Experimentation,
Dr. Larry Kyle.

I think Dr. Kyle’s enthusiasm is premature. I’m not sure that knowing anything about the Norway Spruce gene sequence will help us much in the long run. But if it makes him happy, what’s the harm?

Tell us a story involving you and a conifer.

48 thoughts on “Make Mine Pine”

  4. Good morning. The part of Minnesota where I live is almost in Iowa and there aren’t many naturally occurring conifers here. The ornamental conifers that grew in front of our house were getting too old and I had to pull them out which ended my relationship them. My new conifer friends are the yews I planted to replace the conifers that were pulled. I have always liked the look of yews with their short glossy bright green needles. They are doing a good job of dressing up the front of my house. One of them was placed in a bad spot and is way behind the others in growth, but it is now filling it’s spot nicely.

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  5. I wish I had a good conifer story. We usually had an artificial holiday tree, though for a couple of years I convinced my parents to get real ones. Between the watering and the shed needles, that experiment faded away (one of them was flocked white, a fact I remember with some horror now!). My landlords live in the lower half of our duplex, and the wife discovered (or divined; I’m not sure if medical professionals were involved) she was allergic to pine nuts. Unfortunately she’s quite neurotic, and quickly decided she was allergic to everything evergreen. We have been asked not to bring holiday greenery into the house (which really annoys my roommate) or burn resin incense (which kind of annoys me), she had the pine tree in the yard cut down, and she refuses to eat rosemary…even though rosemary is not related to pines in any way. Oy vey.

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    1. The question with pine nuts is, does she mean pinole (spelling?) nuts? The “pine nuts” we toast and eat on salad or in pesto are not a member of the pine family at all.

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      1. Jacque, I think there are some kinds of pine trees that do produce seeds or pine nuts that you can eat which i think are the ones that are at least sometimes used in pesto.

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        1. Trusty Wikipedia: Pine nuts are the edible seeds of pines (family Pinaceae, genus Pinus). About 20 species of pine produce seeds large enough to be worth harvesting; in other pines the seeds are also edible, but are too small to be of great value as a human food

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  6. I am very fond of the pine nuts produced by some pines. I wish that I could grow one of the kinds of pines that produces pine nuts. I have never heard of anyone producing pine nuts in Minnesota and I assume those kinds of pines can not be grown here.

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  7. Out here we have Ponderosa pines. We successfully fed a flock of about 10 crossbills this winter, birds who like to feast on conifers. We have a bell-shaped metal mesh feeder that could be construed as a large pine cone if you were bird brained. The crossbills were a delight to watch this winter. They were dull orange or yellow.

    We have blue and green spruces in the front. It was under those trees that we found two perfectly preserved Wedgewood cereal bowls that daughter and best friend left there years before during son’s high school graduation reception. The girls, aged 9 at the time, filled the bowls with mints and hid under the trees to feast, and hen, of course, left the bowls there to be covered in spruce needles. We found the bowls a couple of years ago when we were trimming branches. We are delaying daughter’s reception until August in Colorado. We have family there and it is far less expensive for other family to fly and lodge there than in ND. Air fares and hotel rooms are outrageously expensive here.

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      1. No, she deserves a reception and recognition no matter how she treated the Wedgewood. The only punishing aspects of the trip will be that we are driving to Denver so she has to tolerate 10 hours in the van with us as well as travel through the mind-numbing boredom of eastern Wyoming.

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        3. i had been driving from livingston montana and was heading for rapid city, i think it was sheridan and i stopped at a gas station convenience store and asked the 20 year old behind the counter how far is was to rapid city.
          i dont know he said.
          is it like and hour or 3 or 4 hours?
          i dont know.
          how the hell can you live in the middle of nowhere and not know how far it is to the only other big city within range, eastern wyoming is not only boring the cowboys there are not quite as sharp as the cows.

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        4. You’ve got to be kidding, tim. The area around Sheridan is beautiful. I love the rugged beauty of the Big Horn Mountains. I’d spend time there any day over Rapid City.

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  8. Morning all. I am part owner (w/ my sisters) of a small parcel of property in northern Wisconsin that is home to just trees. It came to us from our father, who had a special place in his heart for that part of the world, although he spent most of his life in Missouri.

    When my dad passed away, my mom, sisters, nieces, nephews and Child made a trek up to the property to spread his ashes. My mom choose a fairly small white pine off a little trail. She had also brought a small plaque with my dad’s initials on it that we attached to the tree.

    Since that year (about 9 years ago), Teenager and I have visited “J.B.’s Tree” every summer on our traditional Hayward vacation. The first couple of years I was also a little anxious, not knowing if the tree would still be there, but it seems to be thriving. Then about 4 years ago, we noticed that the plaque was digging into the bark as the tree grew, so we removed the plaque gently and brought it home.

    The land is for sale now (although I doubt it will ever be bought by anyone — it’s been on sale for two years so far), but until it sells, Teenager and I will visit every summer and say some nice words to J.B.’s Tree.

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      1. Next Saturday — yikes! Counting today, just 4 more days of high school…. I think she has started to count the minutes.

        I’m counting the minutes until my mom (Nonny) arrives on Tuesday!

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  9. Our little corner of Madeline Island is solid, virtually impassable spruce, only way to really get through it is to follow the path made by the deer. Trying to figure out when we can get there this summer.

    We have a large spruce in the front yard that is really too big for the house it shelters. Our next door neighbor remembers when the original owner of the house planted it and made a little fence around it, so it wouldn’t get flattened by the neighborhood dogs.

    Back in Our Fair Twixie’s salad days, she escaped up that tree when the neighborhood big dog came onto our yard (she was pretty new to us, she later discovered that dog was a coward and she could glare him off the premises). It was a rainy, cold, miserable day, and it looked like she couldn’t or wouldn’t climb back down, no matter what we tempted her with.

    I was feeling wretched with a sinus infection, but could not just leave her up there, so I heaved the big ladder out of the garage and worked it under the branches-got my foot on about the 3rd rung, and she climbed down, neat as you please.

    love cats.

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    1. If you are a firefighter, one of the sentences you need to survive professionally is this: “Madam, how many skeletons of dead cats have you ever seen up in trees?” 🙂

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      1. Yeah, and I’d like to hit them when they say that – having known cats who were seriously injured falling out of trees, and one who developed pneumonia after a long ordeal stuck on a high branch. Of course the cat doesn’t die IN THE TREE. That doesn’t mean it is safe there.

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    2. love cats? maybe, except for the kitten who thinks 4 a.m. is a good time to start batting around a nail file that she found on your bedboard!

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        1. My daughter’s cat gets famished (her story) in the AM. She used to wake Molly up by jumping on the bed and batting at Molly’s eyes, since the cat knew a person with open eyes was awake. Molly began locking her out of the bedroom. Now Cleo makes her wishes known by slipping a paw under the door and hooking that little springy thing that keeps the door from being slammed against the wall. She pulls it down and releases it: “BOIIIIIING!”

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        2. My sister and her husband had a cat that wanted to get them up at the crack of dawn every day. They started shutting him out of the bedroom, and he developed a pattern of scratching at the door every morning. Finally, before going to bed one night, they put a vacuum cleaner just outside the bedroom door, unplugged, with the switch turned to “ON”, and the cord running under the door. When 4:30 came around, and the cat scratched the door, my brother-in-law rolled over and plugged in the vacuum cleaner. They kept the vacuum cleaner in the hallway for awhile, but they never had to use it again.

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  10. Ever tried climbing a conifer? Many, many, many years (decades) ago, one of my favorite things to do was climb trees. I don’t know why I liked it, I just did. Then we moved to the north woods where I was surrounded by skinny birch trees and lots of pine and spruce. My tree climbing days pretty much stopped then, after a few tries on the evergreens where not only did I not get far, but I was poked mercilessly by needles and got sap all over my clothes and hands – although there were certainly other compensations for living up north.

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    1. Edith, I also liked climbing trees. We didn’t move up North. We did move to a house where there were some large ornamental conifers that I tried to climb. My experience was the same as yours – sharp needles, sap, and no fun.

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  11. my favorite story about conifers is one i have told here before, my uncle paul had a wonderful sense of humor. he always managed to get a second or two in your hotel room to palce a wake up call for 3:15. and he is the player in the conifer story. it was 10 days after christmas in fargo n.d. about 1965. uncle paul called the fargo forum and placed an ad in the paper to pay 1.00 foryou used christmas tree. and listed the address. frank conlin had about 35 kids come by with trees that day and 30 more throughout the week that followed

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  12. i have a tall living room and there is a spot where the tree belongs. this year we went to costco and asked nice if they had a tall one in their trailer full of trees. last year my daughter worked there and talked to the tree guys who saved her one for us that was about 14 feet tall this year it was only 9 or 10 feet tall and the kids complained about our little tree. the first year in the house we went to a spot next to the mall where remarkably they have trees for 28 dollars even for big ones and we asked if they had a big one. they pulled one out and it was taaaalllllll. we took it home and stuck it in the tree stand. does everyone else have to use quarters in front of the screws in order to keep their trees form tipping over? i always have . as it began to thaw out and the branches began to drop it became apparent that it was almost as wide as it was tall. and it ended up taking over the entire area around the tree and was about twice as big as any one we have had since. our cats love playing with the trees and we have in the past had toe tie the tree to the stairway to keep it form getting pulled over, this year we were slow to lash it ot the mast and the cats got it hours after it was decorated, pulled it down and popped all the hand blown polish ornaments my mom gave us the year before in the after christmas buy she made. this coming year ill try setting the vacuum cleaner next to it the first night and see if i can create some distance.

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    1. We order a Frazier fir every year from North Carolina. I love big, fresh Christmas trees. Our ceilings are only 9 feet tall, so I can never put an angel or star on the top of the tree as it is usually scraping the ceiling.

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  13. then there was the time i got frustrated with the damn bear coming in and bothering me at my campsite while i was painting i finally got up up and ran out to head her off at the pass and she looked up and came running full speed at 40 miles and hour two feet away form me, went right on by and made sure she scooted her two cubs i hadnt noticed up the pine trees right behind me. if i had been 2 feet further left i be the subject of dales dancing with bears day for sure.

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  16. The three summers that my family lived in the trailer (CSU – Greeley, CO), we were right next to the football field. Not only did we have the run of the grandstand (our castle) and the ticket booth, but there were also these huge pine trees – you know, the kind with the branches drooping almost to the ground. So 3 or 4 of us each had our own sheltered fort, where we played regularly. Oddly enough, I don’t remember climbing them…

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