View Obscured

I'm embarrassed that this took so long... but six months after moving to the California Central Coast I finally visited a spot in Morro Bay State Park, immediately behind a very cool natural history museum, where the Chumash people had carved mortars in the exposed bedrock for grinding acorns.

They couldn't have picked a more serene or beautiful spot, overlooking across Morro Bay to the sand spit and the massive, signature Morro Rock, one of seven (or is it eight?) "sisters" - a line of volcanic plugs that extend east toward San Luis Obispo.

I squatted next to the mortars (insert sound of knees cracking here) to get a feel for what it must have been like to spend hours in that beautiful place turning the another bountiful - and virtually labor-free - harvest of acorns into a year's worth of nutrients.  I pivoted to look out over the bay...

... and found myself staring straight into an impenetrable wall of eucalyptus trees.  Gah.

Given the reckless way in which eucalyptus were planted in California (and the wannabe timber barons of Montana de Oro State Park is another story for another day) I'm only amazed that the place isn't overrun with koalas.

Native vegetation of Hawaii

Months ago I promised to write a series of posts exploring various aspects of the native versus exotic plant debate.  The idea was to publicly moderate my 25 year internal debate - trust me, it wouldn't have been as thrilling as it sounds - on the issue of planting native versus non-native trees.
I got into this whole glamorous and wildly lucrative forestry racket coming from a strong "nativist" position.  Nature knew better than we about what plants to put where, and moving plants willy-nilly around the globe had unleashed Pandora's boxes full of ecological disasters (see also:  Chestnut blight, Dutch elm disease, kudzu, etc).  I primarily viewed myself as, if not a preservationist - I have always been too much the conservationist/"wise use" advocate to fit that particular mold - then as a restorationist; our management and planting activities should be conducted with an eye toward restoring native landscapes.

My thinking has changed over the years.  Depending on the day, or even the minute, I can argue equally passionately in favor of planting non-natives when appropriate (by which I mean appropriate according to me).  The arguments in my head get very heated at times.  I'm hoping therapy will help. Or drugs.
My basic thoughts in favor of planting non-natives (such as a highly productive southeastern hybrid oaks on corn-deprived Midwestern soils) are:
1) We live in a "post native" world - our soils and ecosystems have been disturbed and altered to the point where they are no longer able to support a "native" ecosystem

2) Plant ranges shift over time - what is native today might not be native on that same spot tomorrow.   In the course of our lifetime the range in which paper birch is "native" has shifted a couple hundred miles north in my "native" Minnesota (to which my ancestors immigrated by way of Missouri, Switzerland and Alsace).

3) Every single plant species growing on Earth was, at some point, non-native to the spot in which it now grows.

I was reminded of one post I had intended to write when I went to watch the movie The Descendants last weekend.  Actually, the movie reminded me of three things:

1) Oscar-caliber movies ain't what they used to be (what did George Clooney pay those critics?)

2) Hawaii has vegetation

3) A guy I really hate

Point #2 is one of my dozens of half finished posts, so this is a good chance to check one off of that list.

Read that again:  Hawaii has vegetation.  An archipelago formed from molten rock spewing from underwater volcanoes has plants.  By definition, not one single species is native to the islands.  By definition, every single one of Hawaii's "native" species was planted there unintentionally and without giving thought to the wisdom of their actions by animals.  Without question some of those introduced plants created huge ecological disturbances and forced some earlier species to the margins of the ecosystem.

I have also mulled this same concept when paging through Sibley's Guide to Birds and seeing the section on accidental bird sightings (a phrase that amuses me for some reason). Every so often some Eurasian bird gets lost, or maybe decides to have a gap year abroad, and gets spotted in North America.  And one would suspect that some of these wayward travelers deposit decidedly non-native plant seeds on North American soil, without the express written consent of the USDA.

Plants ranges move.  They move faster and farther than we really think.  We humans love to do two things: Move plant materials, and beat ourselves up over the consequences.  But really when we choose to plant a non-native species we're really doing nothing new.  

We also tend to look at a forest or a landscape and assume that it always looked like that, that it is supposed  to look like that, and that any changes are therefore bad.

... then again maybe all of this is just a l-o-o-o-n-g way to go to justify to myself the planting of Korean sawtooth oak here in North America as part of a woody perennial agriculture system that beats the hell out of beating the hell out of our soil with corn.

As to point #3:  Every time I see George Clooney I'm reminded of the surgeon who performed a minor procedure on our daughter a couple of years ago.  The guy looked like George Clooney's younger, better looking brother.  Even more annoyingly, he was a really nice guy and a highly skilled surgeon.

God how I loathed him.

Rest stop educates those who stop to read

For travelers driving east out of Paso Robles, CA (Pass of Oak Trees) there are essentially two places to stop during the hour drive on Hwy 41/46 over to Interstate 5:  The Jack Ranch Cafe, famous as the site where James Dean died in a wreck (and for the monument that now stands there in his honor), and a rest stop just east of Shandon.

I have stopped at that rest stop dozens of times.  Actually it is probably more accurate to say that for many years I hoped to stop at that rest stop, and often times I really, really needed to stop at that rest stop (given the amount of coffee required to drive that barren stretch of highway in the wee hours of the morning without, at the risk of sounding insensitive, doing my own imitation of James Dean), but it always seemed to be closed for renovations.  For about 15 years. 

Thankfully the rest area is open now and has become a frequent stopping spot for me while driving to and from the San Joaquin Valley for work.  The rest area is now a very nice one, with an interpretive display / historical marker in the walk way from the parking lot to the rest rooms.  It's beautiful.  It's informative.  So of course for months I walked right past it without even noticing it.  It was only while I was pacing around talking on the phone that I actually bothered to notice it, stop, and read it. I just about fell over.

(Click each photo to enlarge)

Which means this rest area in Shandon, CA has educated a lot more people in the last few months about acorns as food than this blog has!

The World Has Lost A Great Golfer/Complete Nutcase

In the days before golf became a pathway to fame and fortune many talented young players decided against pursuing the game professionally in order to follow more lucrative and respectable careers.  Like refuse collector.  Or pawn broker.  The great Bobby Jones remained an amateur is entire career.  Francis Ouimet won the US Open but honored his promise to his parents never to turn pro (of course this was in the days when professional golfers were not allowed in the same club house as the "gentlemen" members).  My wife's uncle was an outstanding collegiate golfer, but chose to take over the family travel agency rather than pursue a professional golf career.  (Of course most of the above mentioned men were relatively affluent. I still love Lee Trevino's quote on the eve of the final round of the Open Championship in England; when Trevino, who grew up in poverty, was asked if the pressure of the situation might get to him he smiled and said something to the effect of, "This isn't pressure.  Pressure is when you're playing for 20 dollars a hole and you only have 2 dollars in your pocket.")

Another guy who gave up a potentially lucrative - and certainly historic - golf career in favor of going into the "family business" was none other than the dear little leader himself, Kim Jong-Il.  (Stay with me here.)

It seems that in about 1994 the Kimster played an 18 hole round of golf in 38 strokes under par.  If par was the standard 72 strokes, that means he fired a 34.  By way of comparison, the record round for a PGA tour - comprising the best players the world has ever seen - round is either 58 or 59 - I'm too lazy to look it up.  Kim's round included not one, not two, not three, but 11 holes in one.  Now, before you get all skeptical on me you should know this:  Kim's historic round of golf was verified by both the official North Korean news agency and all seventeen bodyguards who followed him on the round.   If you can't believe 17 guys whose next meal - and life - depends on the answer they give, who can you believe?

Now you might ask: how many years did the dear leader need to practice in order to reach this pinnacle, this surpassing level of performance?  Zero.  Apparently, this was his first round of golf ever.  I know, it very nearly defies belief!  Imagine what he could have done with a little practice.  It's not unrealistic to think that a perfect 18 might have been within the reach of a player so prodigiously - almost supernaturally - talented.  Heck, he might have even found a way to complete 18 holes in fewer than 18 strokes (perhaps splitting the ball with his driver and sinking each half in two different holes).  If anyone could have done it, it would be L'il Kim.

By the time Kim humbled that North Korean course, professional golf had become pathway to millions of dollars.  So one can only admire all the more the complete selflessness Kim displayed when, just like Alice's uncle, he decided to forgo a pro golf career and take over the family business at a critical time.

Unfortunately for the people of North Korea, the Kim family business was starving millions of people to death, and imprisoning, torturing and executing most of those who survived.

We have seen a lot of sadistic dictators.  We have seen more than a few messianic dictators.  But rarely has there been a dictator as batpoo/port-a-john rat crazy as Kim.  That's because the only way someone that batpoo crazy gets to be a dictator is if his much more intelligent, enormously sadistic, completely messianic, and (very) slightly less batpoo crazy father secures the job for him.  (And if he's willing to turn his back on a golf career.)

Starving people on that scale takes some real effort.  All the more so in a land that stands as pretty much the last place on earth where acorns comprise a significant portion of the diet, and which still has "has" in the case of South Korea, "had" in the case of North Korea) an acorns-as-food industry.  Starving people on that scale requires completely divorcing people from a longstanding and proven source of nutrition, making them utterly dependent upon grain crops, and then failing to provide the infrastructure to a) distribute those grain crops to the people and b) protect grain stores from floods and other unusual - but thoroughly predictable - disasters.  It need not be said that famines are of course good for the dictatorship business (see also Mao Pse-tung and Joseph Stalin) in terms of consolidating power.

Control the food and you control the populace.  Food = power.

We have the opposite situation in the US.  The government isn't (intentionally) starving people. Instead it is paying grain farmers to grow more corn than the populace can possibly eat, and then subsidizing the food industry's efforts to cram more of that cheap corn down our willing maws.  Here's a tip kids:  You want job security in the future, become a physician specializing in diabetes.

The point I'm laboring to make here is that reliance on annual grain crops as our stable food source a) frees up more of our time for other leisure pursuits - like warfare - and b) allows the power hungry to alternatively starve or stuff us - whichever is most effective in achieving their goals and consolidating their power.

People who grow/gather their own food cannot be controlled as easily.  Which would free up more time for the Kim Jung-il's, Joseph Stalins, Mao Tse-tung's and ConAgra's (yes I did just group them together) of the world for other leisure pursuits.

Like golf.

Kim's demise makes me wish I believed in a just and proportionate afterlife.

Leading the league...

... in half finished blog posts!

Uniquely/paradoxically/idiotically nearly all of my blog posts - the modern/"paperless" way to publish your thoughts - start out as chicken-scratched ink on paper in a work/sales notebook or scrap of random paper.

I have compiled a depressing/impressive stack of half finished posts.  In fact I have achieved a new first:  I have not one but two half finished posts about how many half finished posts I have written!

If the rode to hell is paved with half finished blog posts I'm a hydrofoil racing down the river Styx. 

Here is a partial list of the unfinished posts you can (or perhaps not) expect in early 2012:
Oak gall ink
California white oak acorns = dang tasty
The better balanoculture blog over the pond
Parking lots - too bad parked cars interfere with the perfect acorn collecting surface
Foresters & lawyers - My commencement speech post continued
Pistachios - words of wisdom and a blueprint for oaks from J. Russell Smith
Native plants and roller rinks
Toby Alone sequel - one more book and I'll finally crack the subtle allegory
Kim Jung-il and acorns
Your typical neighborhood hot dog/acorn bread stand on the bay
Rehashing old Northern Nut Growers Association notes and speeches
On the trail with John Muir

Yes, I just used a blog post to create a to do list.  Sorry about that.  But hopefully it will spur me to complete those half finished scribbles.  Now if I can just find the notebooks I started them in...

Anyway, thanks for reading.  We now have thirteen followers!  Thirteen people can change the world.  Seems like a rag-tag group of thirteen people changed the world pretty dramatically once before.

Ghost Oaks

My work often has me hitting the road in my truck with the stars still overhead, in time to reach the hills around Paso Robles, CA at dawn - which means pea soup coastal fog.

It's my favorite part of my job, and my favorite time of the day, as ancient California white oaks (Quercus lobata) and California live oaks (Q. agrifolia) emerge from the mist.  I like to think of them as ghost oaks from a time when the native people of this area relied on them for sustenance.

Unlike usual, I actually stopped the truck to take these shots.  It's safety first here at Oak Watch!

(Click to enlarge)

There is a steel post next to the trunk of this tree which you can't see from this distance.  In the morning mist I like to think of it as a decorated staff that indigenous California families would lean against their favorite acorn producing trees to claim their bounty for the coming harvest.  I know I would have claimed this tree for my brood.  In fact the post supports an owl box to help control rodents in the mist-shrouded vineyard just out of sight.

(Click to enlarge and frame ;-)

I am particularly happy with the (purely accidental) reflection on the hood of the truck.

Ansel Adams eat your heart out.

The Mississippi Mechanic of High Performance Oaks

About ten years ago (or was it more than that?) Alanis Morissette had a top-selling CD which included the smash hit song “Isn’t It Ironic?”  Ironically, none of the events described by Ms. Morissette (rain on your wedding day, a free ride when you already paid, etc.) were, in fact, ironic.  Unfortunate, yes.  Ironic, no.

It is, however, ironic that many of my heroes, or at least people whose attributes I greatly admire, are titans in an activity in which I have zero interest and couldn’t be paid to actually watch:  motor sports.

I have written before in Oak Watch about Don “Big Daddy” Garlits.  I have immediate admiration for a guy who can refer to himself – and get others to refer to him – as Big Daddy with a straight face.  Beyond that, Big Daddy was a drag racing pioneer.  It was he who changed the design of top fuel dragsters so that the driver no longer straddled the engine but instead sat directly in front of it.  Garlits had this epiphany after an exploding engine nearly removed his legs; apparently he decided he would rather have the engine explode behind his head.  This design innovation was based on the theory that while it is possible (and maybe even preferable) to reach 250mph in a quarter mile without a brain, it is physically impossible to do so without feet.

Garlits was the first to break the 170, 180, 200, 240, 250, 260, and 270 miles per hour barriers.  If we assume that the pre-Garlits best was 169mph, that means that over the course of his career Garlits increased the top speed over a quarter mile by an astonishing 60%.

Another motorhead hero of mine is Burt Munro, the kiwi motorcyclist depicted in the movie World’s Fastest Indian.  Munro took a 1920 Indian motorcycle – a bike with an original top speed of 55mph – and modified it continuously for 40 years.  During the 1960’s he set world speed records for engines under 1000cc’s at the Bonneville Salt Flats, and once topped 200mph in an unofficial run.  He cast many of the parts – minor pieces like pistons, barrels, fly wheels – himself using makeshift molds and tools.

In taking his Indian from a top speed of 55 to 200mph Munro improved its performance by a jaw-dropping 264%.

What I love about both of these guys is their painstaking attention to detail, and their single-minded determination to push the absolute limits of performance.  To never, ever be satisfied.

What does this have to do with oak trees?  Everything.  Absolutely everything.

We need oaks to once again feed the world, to once again become the Staff of Life they were for thousands upon thousands of years, before we declared war on the soil, and before we sold our collective soul for the false food security of grain crops.  In order for oaks to feed the world, we must first convince the world that oaks are fast growing trees capable of astounding productivity, and we must also use the genetic diversity/elasticity of the genus Quercus combined with modern growing practices, to make them even faster and more productive.

The oaks that surround us are the 1920 Indian motorcycles.  They just need the arboreal equivalents of Don Garlits and Burt Munro to bring out their potential, to take them to the Bonneville Salt Flats of tree growth and show the world what they can do.

Luckily I know of one such man.

Let me ask you this:  Say you plant an 18 inch tall oak seedling.  How much would you expect it to grow the first year… One foot?  Eighteen inches?  Take a look at this:

 (Click to enlarge)

This is a hybrid overcup x white oak (Q. lyrata x Q. alba).  It was planted in March of 2011 as an 18 inch seedling.  This photograph was taken on September 1, 2011 – six months later - at which point the tree was 8 feet 1 inch tall.  That's 97 inches tall. 

For those of you keeping score at home that’s 79 inches of growth in one growing season – in the first growing season.  From a reasonable expectation of 18 inches of first year growth that’s a 340% improvement.  You couldn’t pay me to watch a car race.  But I’d pay money to sit (or should it be “set?”) in a Mississippi field and watch this tree grow.  More exciting, and a much lower chance of being struck by flaming debris.

How do you make a race car go faster?  You remove the things that limit its speed – feed it more fuel and more air.  How do you make an oak tree grow faster (which is to say, how do you make an oak tree reach its inherent growth potential)?  You remove the things that limit its growth.

You identify naturally occurring hybrids, especially in the white oak group.  (That’s not as hard as it sounds; in fact I defy you to find an individual tree in the white oak group – or any oak – that isn’t, to some degree, a “hybrid.”  But more than that you need to be able to identify individual mama trees with the potential for fast growth, and have a good sense of where papa pollen is coming from.)

You sow the acorn in root pruning pots to give it a killer root system.  You plant with an actual shovel, not using the planting bar/stomp method, so the roots can fan out.  You fertilize to overcome any deficiencies in our (usually) worn out soils.  You prune laterals as they develop, to channel all that growth energy skyward.  You aggressively control weeds, recreating the role that fire played in creating the momentary competitive advantage from which the mature oaks we see day benefited in their infancy.

And you use the best tree tubes, to keep all your painstaking work from simply providing deer browse, to reduce wind and moisture stress, and to provide protection from weed control operations.  Under the heading of shameless self promotion (but self promotion in the furtherance of a noble cause!) the best tree tubes are for sale here.

The Burt Munro of oaks is alive and well, and living in Mississippi.  His name is Dudley Phelps.  And you can buy his hybrid oaks –and my tree tubes – here.  Yes, Mossy Oak.  Which means – as I have said so often before – that there are a whole lot of acorn-fed deer out there eating better and healthier than all of us.

At least now I can have a hero with dirt on his hands instead of motor oil.

This just in:  Lest you think that rapid height growth of the overcup x white oak shown above comes only at the expense of diameter/caliper growth, take a look at this:

 (Click to enlarge)

The base of a Totten hybrid oak (overcup x swamp chestnut), planted about April 1, 2011.  Then again this tree is just a paltry 7 feet tall (having grown "just" 66 inches in its first growing season).  The gray stake in the background is a 1" diameter pvc conduit pipe.

Anyone still think oak are slow growing?  I didn’t think so.  And trust me, there will come a day when 79 inches of growth for an oak seedling in the first growing season will be disappointing.