Cannibalistic Quercus Runs Amok In Mississippi Woods: Film at Five

It's hard to say which is cooler - the photographs or the explanation that came with them.  Let's start with the photos (taken by and shown with the permission of and in gratitude to Mr. Jeremy Blake):

(Click to enlarge... please!)

What you're looking at here is one oak - one very large oak - which grew to completely engulf another, smaller oak.  Here's the kicker:  The smaller, engulfed oak is still alive!

That photo gives a great sense of scale and a clearer sense of what happened.  This photo would flat out make Ansel Adams jealous:

(Click to enlarge, print and frame)



But as great as these photos are, even better to an oak geek like me is the explanation that came with them.  The easy way to explain this scene would be to say that a cherrybark oak (Q. pagoda or Q. falcata var. pagodifolia depending on who you trust - and since I don't trust any oak taxonomists I don't call it either) swallowed a white oak (Q. alba).

But that's not how Quercophiles like us would describe it!  Writes Dr. Brad R. Lieb of the photo (and I hope he'll forgive my paraphrasing in places):

"I think (it's a cherrybark); if not just a southern red; the leaves appeared to be kind of small, but it is such a big overgrown, overmature old tree and not a vigorous big leafed youngun so that might be it. I think it's pagodafolia, yes. And "george" being hugged to death, appears to be an alba/michauxii/chinkapin cluster (emphasis mine), hard to tell with all the leaves off. I've just never seen "engulfment" or whatever it's called, to that degree."

I was going to say that Brad "gets it" - with "it" being the elastic continuum nature of oak classification - but I am sure that would be doing him a great disservice.  I am sure that he "got it" long before I ever did.  The more I correspond with oak enthusiasts the more I realize that I'm pretty late to that particular party.  (The key, now that we have all found each other, is to truly turn it into a party!)

I love how he doesn't just blithely classify the big red "engulfer" as either southern red oak or cherrybark oak (to the extent that there is truly a well defined difference between the two); instead he takes into account the age and condition of the tree, and is content with a certain amount of ambiguity.

I love even more his description of the "engulfee" not simply as white oak, but as falling within the white/swamp chestnut/chinkapin cluster - with a mix of Latin and common names that actually clarifies his meaning and belies a deep understanding of what he's trying to communicate.  I love the idea of thinking of oaks as falling within a cluster along a continuum.

But even more than the photo, even more than the deeply insightful description, I've been amusing myself thinking of the best oak geek yellow journalism headlines I would write to describe the carnage!

RED ON WHITE VIOLENCE ON THE RISE

WHEN ERYTHROBALANS GO BAD

IT'S AN OAK EAT OAK WORLD

LEUCOPHOBIC INFANTICIDE - WILL YOUR SAPLING BE NEXT?

To answer the obvious question, the answer is yes.  Yes, I do have a D for dork stamped on my forehead.  Then again, if you're reading this, you probably do to!

So what headline would you write?