This comes from some examples by Gabriel Mulzer. Using his examples that generate simple sequences with Fibonacci functions, I tweaked the algorithms to draw my pine cone.
After scanning drawing of said cone, I cut out some of the scales in PhotoShop and used them in Flash. The generated cone is made by selecting a random scale from a MovieClip for each element in the "drawing".
The various effects are acheived by changing the blending mode and colour schemes applied to these movieclips.