Literal translation
he is as tight as a green pine cone
Meaning
he's tight-fisted, stingy
Explanation
The image relies on the botanical observation of the pigno, the pine cone, which stays tightly closed as long as it is still green and unripe, only opening to release its seeds once it has dried under sun and time. Comparing a person to a green pine cone amounts to saying that they keep everything shut, their purse in particular, refusing to let anything slip out of what they own, with the same firmness as the still-green cone. The verb sarra, meaning to tighten, to compress, to close or even to lock away, reinforces the image of airtight closure already carried by the pine cone, the two elements of the comparison matching each other exactly. The expression belongs to a familiar and rather mocking register, used to tease someone's stinginess by drawing on an image taken from the Mediterranean landscape and from the vegetation typical of Provence, the pine being an ever-present tree of the region. It relates to other expressions in the same set that evoke stinginess through images from nature or the animal world.