(An unauthorized continuation of “Things We Like”)
Scattered along the deep ravines and canyons where I live are trees called ghost, or sometimes grey, pines. The trees are scraggly and uncharismatic. “Scarcely in any sense a beautiful tree,” Willis Jepson, one of California’s early botanists, wrote of them in 1901, they give “no comfort of shade to the inexperienced wayfarer who, dusty and sun-bitten, seeks its protection.”
But I love ghost pines, which thrive in the poor, rocky soils of California’s foothills. I especially love their enormous cones, which grow as big as pineapples. I’ve been admiring this one on my desk, searching for any pine nuts the squirrels might have left behind, and watching insects circumnavigate its girth. I like its heft and overlapping, talon-sharp scales, which make it look like a medieval instrument of torture. You won’t find this pine cone in a bag of cinnamon-scented holiday potpourri, or glue-gunned to a wreath.
