Evergreen Trees With Cones

Spruces

• The Serbian spruce (Picea omorika) is a large evergreen tree native to southeastern Europe but adapted to U.S. Department of Agriculture Plant Hardiness Zone 4. It attains heights of 100 feet, but its cones are about 1½ inches long. Serbian spruce cones are purple when they first develop, but turn red-brown with time. Cones on a Norway spruce (Picea abies) hang down from the ends of the drooping branches. The cones grow to 6 inches long and change to a light shade of brown after starting out a greenish color.

Pines

• Bosnian pine (Pinus heldreichii) features 3- to 6-inch-long cones. They are an attractive shade of blue-purple before eventually taking on a brown color. Bosnian pine, suitable for USDA Zones 3 through 8, grows to 70 feet. It works as a windbreak or screen, but is useful as a specimen tree in open landscapes. The cones of the Swiss stone pine (Pinus cembra), a potential landscaping tool for zones as cold as Zone 3, remain on the branches for as long as three years after they mature. They provide you with violet-brown color in the tree; the cones are oval to oblong, developing to 3 inches long.

Cypresses

• The Hinoki cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa) is a Japanese species growing to 75 feet as a cultivated landscaping tree, but well over 100 in the wild. Its cones are orange-brown in color and composed of eight scales forming a rounded shape. The diminutive cones attach to the tree via a short stalk. Hinoki cypress performs poorly in alkaline soils. The globular, brown cones of the Alaska cedar, or Nootka cypress (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis) are up to ½ inch across. The cones of this evergreen tree for zones such as Zone 4, where the weather is constantly damp, mature by their second year.

Firs

• One of the features of the cones on fir trees is that they develop and grow upright on the branches; such is the case with the 2- to 4-inch cones of the balsam fir (Abies balsamea). This evergreen tree grows best between USDA Zones 3 and 6, where the climate is cool. The cones are purple when immature and they possess a cylindrical appearance. Korean fir (Abies koreana) cones are extremely ornamental, notes the University of Connecticut Plant Database. The cylinderlike cones are violet when young but tan when mature. They grow to 3 inches long on this compact fir, which grows to about 30 feet tall.