Were you aware of it? vol. 23: The Knobcone Pine

Chapter VIII of John Muir's The Mountains of California runs you through the trees that make up the forests of, well, the mountains of California. To my untrained eye, the little black and white line drawings of the various tree genera and species may as well have been identical. Or, rather, all but one, this so-called Knobcone Pine.

John Muir has this to say about them:

Pinus Tuberculata
This curious little pine is found at an elevation of from 1500 to 3000 feet, growing in close, willowy groves. It is exceedingly slender and graceful in habit, although trees that chance to stand alone outside the groves sweep forth long, curved branches, producing a striking contrast to the ordinary grove form. The foliage is of the same peculiar gray-gren color as that of the Nut Pine, and is worn about as loosely, so that the body of the tree is scarcely obscured by it.

At the age of seen or eight years it begins to bear cones, not on branches, but on the main axis, and, as they never fall off, the trunk is soon picturesquely dotted with them. The branches also become fruitful after they attain sufficient size. The average size of the older trees is about thirty or forty feet in height, and twelve to fourteen inches in diameter. The cones are about four inches long, exceedingly hard, and covered with a sort of silicious varnish and gum, rendering them impervious to moisture, evidently with a view to the careful preservation of the seeds. [...]

The Grove Form and the Isolated Form (Pinus Tuberculata)
It is so little known [...] that it can hardly be said to have a common name. Most mountaineers refer to it as 'that queer little pine-tree covered all over with burs.' In my studies of this species I found a very interesting and significant group of facts, whose relations will be seen almost as soon as stated:

1st. All the trees in the groves I examined, however unequal in size, are all of the same age.
2d. Those groves are all planted on dry hillsides covered with chaparral, and therefore are liable to be swept by fire.
3d. There are no seedlings or saplings in or about the living groves, but there is always a fine, hopeful crop springing up on the ground once occupied by any grove that has been destroyed by the burning of the chaparral.
4th. The cones never fall off and never discharge their seeds until the tree or branch to which they belong dies. [...]

Needless to say, I was skeptical. This all sounds a little too fantastical to be true, something of a chimera of the plant kingdom. Except! We were clearing away a giant pile of Black Acacia logs from the base of an old Coast Live Oak, and I found this log about a foot in diameter With Pinecones Stuck Right To It. It was like chancing upon a unicorn horn, I swear to you.

And then! I was wrapping things up at the Botanical Garden the other week, having potted a bunch of vine cuttings, and on my way back to the N Judah, there appears from nowhere an Entire Tree with pine cones growing straight out of the trunk. And not only that, I found another one in one of the vegetable beds at school when we pulled out the sunchokes. I am a believer! However, I have done you the service of not providing any photographic evidence to encourage your skepticism and heighten the drama of your personal discovery. You are welcome.