Yes, These Are Conifers

So I thought I'd demonstrate how counterintuitive a taxonomy can be, just on Earth, by showing some weird plants, things I'd come across while researching how to do my aliens' plants. All of these are conifers, most of them in the Podocarpaceae family, which is mostly found in New Zealand and Australia. Apparently the conifers from Gondwana are crazy, and think it's okay to look like angiosperms. Then again yews aren't from there.

For instance, here's a yew cone:That is a cone. Not a berry. Freaky, huh?

Did you know these, too, are cones?Yeah, that's juniper. The pointy rather than scaly needles are apparently immature.

Here's a conifer's impression of an olive tree:That's a podocarp.

This one is a shade of green we don't associate with conifers:Doesn't that shade say "deciduous tree"? Freaky, huh?

How about this? I know, just looks like a juniper. But why's it red?This is Parasitaxus, the only parasitic conifer. Conifer mistletoe!

Here's another wrong-shade-of-green one, that also has soft, rounded needles. I dub it "Safety Pine"!Its name is Prumnopitys ladei.

This one, Saxogothea conspicua, isn't just weird for a conifer.

And finally, here's three that are freaky. Kinda looks like a deciduous shrub, right?

This one thinks it's an ivy.Maybe a columbine, actually.

And finally, this is a conifer with delusions of oak-ness.Isn't it awesome? This is basically what the (non-agave-esque) trees on the felinoids' homeworld look like, except theirs are red or orange and have an iridescent cuticle, like certain seaweeds.

Like this one.
It's Fauchea laciniata.

Perhaps I'll do one about animals, the many and strange things I have found out simply from researching my books. I doubt that one would have near as many pictures, though, bird airsacs or the fact they don't think with their frontal lobe are a lot harder to illustrate.