Variation in a Sample of Pinus radiata Cones from the Nelson District By M. H. Bannister, Botany Division, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Wellington, New Zealand * Now Forest Research Institute, Rotorua. (With Figs. 1–22 in Text-figs. A-D and Text-figs. 1–4.) [Read before the Wellington Branch, August 26, 1953; received by the Editor, August 31, 1953.] Summary Cones from 250 trees in the Nelson district varied in size, proportions, shape, and in characters of the apophyses, umbos and mucros. Variation was great between the cone populations of different trees, and small within the population of any one tree. Each character seemed to vary continuously between two distinct extremes, and intermediate forms were the most common. Graphical analysis suggested some correlations and emphasised a great diversity of character-combinations. When the variation was compared with earlier descriptions of the species, it appeared to correspond closely with that in its natural habitat. Introduction About a century ago, the Californian species, Pinus radiata D. Don, was introduced into New Zealand. That species now occupies in pure plantations approximately half a million acres of this country. Such is its economic importance in the southern hemisphere that many more or less technical articles have been devoted to it. Some people are aware of its morphological variability, which is of particular interest to silviculturists, wood-users and tree-breeders, but few have studied this variability, and fewer still have tried to describe it. To the earlier taxonomists, it suggested distinct species; to later ones, distinct varieties of one species. For the genus Pinus, the cones, or seed-bearing strobili, provide many of the criteria for distinguishing species, and the earlier descriptions of Pinus radiata used these structures almost exclusively for its taxonomic subdivision. This paper aims at describing the variation of the cones as it appeared in a large sample, and comparing it with previous descriptions. Source of Specimens Cones were collected in various parts of the Nelson district. Nearly all of them came from sites not more than thirty miles apart. They represented a total of 250 trees, which were as follows:— (1) Seventy-two scattered self-sown trees in the coastal area between Upper Moutere and Mapua; (2) Twenty-six scattered self-sown trees near Wakefield; (3) One hundred trees comprising two separate samples of fifty each, in a small closed stand of natural regeneration at “Kainui,” six miles south of Wakefield;