Abies alba (4811' N 1603' E)

Description:

2011-04-16 Lower Austria, district Wien-Umgebung (mixed forest; 495 msm Quadrant 7862/1).German name: Weiss-TanneSee also this photo.This twig interestingly shows the space/time between flowering periods of fir trees: as is commonly known, many trees only flower every other year in huge numbers (and in-between only a very few flower); this is a strategy to avoid all their seeds being eaten by animals, as there are a couple or so of years between those mass flowerings animals feeding on seeds cannot adopt to the mass production, and cannot increase their size uncontrollably (which would mean that most of the seeds would be eaten).Those years of abundance of flowers (and thus, seeds) also are known under the German name Mastjahre = 'feasting years' or 'mast years' something like it in English: there's bound to be a native English term for it but I don't know it.Now, what is so really interesting about this shot is that you can actually count how many years were between flowering, and further it is obvious that in the first year after a flowering year the tree only grow very little, evidently because it was exhausted from last year's flower and seed production; after that came a year of normal growth without flowering, and then yet another year of normal growth with flowering.Many thanks to Elisabeth Gruber for this explanation about male flowers, I never gave them much thought before.