Here’s an ICE tree that emits a particle from each polygon in a cluster.
In Emit from Position, I’ve set the Rate Type to Total Number of Particles, and the Rate to 1, so I get a single particle per polygon.

I exploded the Align to Emit Location compound and modified it to use the PolygonNormal to align the particles (which I’ve set to “cones”).

Hat tip: Sebastian Kowalski on the XSI mailing list