I can’t decide which I like more.
The northern red oaks and northern pin oaks, who say, “Screw you winter, you can take my chlorophyll but I’m going to keep my dry leathery leaves to rustle in your winds in stubborn defiance of your doleful silence.”
Or the bur oaks who say, “Fine winter, you can take my leaves - they were shredded, battered and pocked with galls after a summer of feeding countless insects and fungi and it was their time to go – but I’m going to use your whiteness as the perfect, stark white backdrop for my ancient labyrinthine branches, my massive skeleton which lies hidden all summer beneath a skin of leaves.”
Let’s call it a tie.
And that’s about all the poetic I care to wax about winter. Bring on spring. Please. It started way too early, has already lasted too long, and I have acorns I'm dying to plant.
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According to Phil Rutter, chestnuts and hazelnuts do a measurable amount of photosynthesis during the winter months using chlorophyll in the bark. I wonder, since oaks are related to chestnuts and hazelnuts - do they also photosynthesize during the winter months? And all those fractal branches would help expose more surface to sunlight and reflected light...
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