Pigne are wooden inflorescences, typical of evergreen trees, widely used in the context of creative recycling and school jobs. You will surely have admired them in the form of Christmas decorations, candles, garlands and whoever has more.
Today, however, we do not want to use them for a classic job, nor for decorative purposes, but we want to make you know their alternative use. Do you know they act as natural hygrometers? In fact, they change appearance according to the surrounding level of humidity, allowing us to predict time.
Just hang them on a thread, on the terrace or in the garden, to understand if the rain is coming or if the weather will remain good: in the first case the pine cones ends, in the second case the pine cone remains open. Try us!
Experiment with pine cones to be proposed to children
To explain to children how pine cones react to humidity, we offer you a simple and fun experiment, suggested by the WWF.
Necessary
Get three dry pine cones of fir, pine or larch (better to use only one type), three containers, a timer. Before starting the experiment, make sure the time is dry and sunny.
Procedure
The experiment in question will allow you to understand that the pine cones, in contact with the humidity of the water, close the flakes called bract. But if they are immersed in cold water, they close them even more quickly. They do it to protect the seeds placed inside.
That’s why when there is rain and cold they close the flakes, while when the weather returns clearly serene they reopen them, allowing us to predict what time will do.
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