Small Seeds Become Ancient Trees

By Branden Andersen You’ve almost certainly driven past this tree without realizing it. To most, it looks like a standard shade tree, usually standing alone in the middle of a field or at the edge of a vineyard. Its bark is deeply furrowed, limbs gnarled and canopy– in advanced age– as wide as a farmhouse. If the tree is old enough, it stood when Lewis and Clark explored the Willamette Valley. Its acorns fed the local Kalapuya people long before a single grapevine was intentionally planted in Oregon soil. It is Quercus garryana – the Oregon white oak– and is rapidly disappearing. According to the Clackamas Soil and Water Conservation District, a mere 10 percent of the oak habitats present in 1850 still remain. And 96 percent of what’s left stand on private land. The Umpqua Watersheds organization puts the loss in starker terms: estimates of remaining oak ecosystems across the Pacific Northwest range from just five to 15 percent of their pre-European

by Hilary Berg · source ↗