Monkey Puzzle tree cones

I recently came across a large Monkey Puzzle tree in Portland, Oregon with some mature seed cones on the lower branches. This allowed me to get some good pictures a good bit closer up than I have in the past.
These cones are about the size of a softball, measuring about 12-15 cm in diameter (4-5 inches). They are a rather peculiar cone for a rather peculiar tree and occur at the terminal ends of this evergreen tree species rather peculiar branches.
This particular tree was rather loaded with the female seed cones as you can see in the image below.

Incense Cedar tree seeds

The seeds of the Incense cedar (Calocedrus decurrens) are released from a pod shaped cone that opens up like the mouth of a crocodile except that the crocodile probably does not have as much of a tongue as does the opened cone of the Calocedrus decurrens tree.
The mouth-like flaps of the cone open wide on each side to reveal four winged seeds inside that are released and dispersed by the wind. The image below shows both the seed cone as well as the male pollen cones (small light green on the tips of the scale like leaves). This image also illustrates well the branch and leaf form of the Incense cedar tree.

Below is an image of the cone before it opens which was taken about two months prior to the images above.

California Incense-cedar: Calocedrus decurrens

The California Incense Cedar (species: Calocedrus decurrens) is one of quite a few trees that are referred to as cedars. The images in this post are of a tree that I planted about ten years ago (it was from a nursery and was about 7 feet tall at the time). It is quite easy to confuse this tree with the Western Red Cedar if you don't get a good look at the seed cones.

The seed cones (above) have a unique shape that serves to easily identify this tree species and distinguish it from others that have similar scale like leaves. There is another image of the seed cone shape at the bottom of this post. The image below is of the pollen cones that are a lot smaller than the seed cones. They form on the terminal ends of the scale like leaves.

The conical shape and pleasant dark green color of this tree make it a fine choice as an ornamental tree species for parks and gardens.