A day no oak lover can afford to miss...

...except I will have to miss it.  And it's killing me.

The International Oak Society is holding an Oak Day in Mississippi hosted by Dudley Phelps, nursery manager for Mossy Oak's Nativ Nurseries.

Click here to learn more.

John Wooden was the most successful college basketball coach ever, leading UCLA to ten NCAA championships in a twelve year period.  He was known as the Wizard of Westwood.  When fans, sports radio hosts and especially rival coaches discuss Wooden, the argument always arises:  Was it Wooden's coaching or was it his players?  (As in, who wouldn't have won that many championships with Bill Walton, Lew Alcindor and the other amazing players he coached?)  Chicken, egg, who cares?  Fact is Wooden both got the players and he coached them to reach their fullest potential.  Bill Walton tells the story of his first practice under Coach Wooden.  What nuggets of wisdom would the Wizard bestow upon them?  What complex offensive strategy would he blow their young minds with?  Then Wooden proceeded to spend the first 20 minutes of practice discussing the proper way to tie a pair of basketball sneakers.

His point:  Details matter.  Details make all the difference between success and failure.

Dudley Phelps is the Wizard of West Point (as in West Point, Mississippi).  His accomplishments dwarf those of John Wooden.  Don't believe me?  Take a look.

(Click to enlarge)

 

 This is a white x overcup oak hybrid.  It was planted as a 20 inch tall seedling in March, 2011.  This photo was taken 7 months later, in October 2011.  The plastic tree tube is 4ft tall.  The tree is twice that.  Do the math (no seriously, I'm not good enough at math to calculate the growth).  Here's that same tree one year later, in October 2012.  It's a good two inches in caliper at the base.

(Click to enlarge)

 

Yes, that's 19 months - 2 growing seasons - after planting a 20 inch seedling.  

Fluke you say?  Take a gander at this:

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He can make trees grow sideways!  Actually, blogger takes all vertical portrait format photos and turns them sideways and there doesn't seem to be a damn thing I can do about it.  Sorry about that.  Here's the story on this one. Chinese chestnut, planted as an 18 inch tall seedling in July, 2012.  Didn't grow at all above ground for the remainder of the 2012 growing season (although I'm sure the roots were busy).  This photo was taken in September of 2013.  Four foot tube.  Ten foot tree.  One (and a half) growing season.

Kind of puts 10 NCAA Championships to shame doesn't it?

So what's the secret, superior players (in this case planting stock) or superior coaching (planting methods and attention to detail)?  Both.  Dudley 'recruits' the players (identifies superior parent trees* and collects their seed), trains them (cultivates the nursery stock), and coaches them (plants and maintains them).  His attention to every detail of the process is what sets him apart.  Ask him how to plant a tree and he'll spend 20 minutes talking about preparing the soil months in advance - the arboreal equivalent of how to tie your shoes.  It's what makes him the Wizard of West Point.

* The longer I have been a sports fan the more I realize the importance of parentage; so many of the athletes I cheer for today are the sons and daughters - or in some cases grandchildren - of athletes I cheered for as a kid!

I would give up one or two non-essential limbs to be there for Oak Day.  Hope you can make it, and I hope it draws the kind of turn out it deserves - which is to say enough people to fill a stadium.  These days I'd way rather watch oaks grow than a basketball game - more action and fewer commercial.

Reintroducing Acorns Into The Human Diet

Great article on what we've been advocating for years:  It's time for humans to rediscover the food that served as Staff of Life for much of our history.

Click here... in Scientific American!

How awesome is that?

The Massive Oaks of Costa Rica

Wow.

Just, wow.  I am ambivalent about Eco-tourism.  I get the idea of creating economic value for ecosystems as ecosystems and not as natural resources/commodities.  It might, in the end, be the only way to conserve them within the economic realities of the world.  But I have a problem with consuming fossil fuels to go see natural wonders which are threatened/damaged by the consumption of fossil fuels.

But man, I'd love to go to Costa Rica and see these trees.

Scroll down.  Either that's a REALLY big acorn or the dude has a really small hand.

Thanks Lucas!

Have a great weekend everyone.

South Dakota State University planting hybrid oak on Arbor Day

SDSU is planting a hybrid oak in a Brookings, SD park to commemorate Arbor Day this weekend.  It's great to see an oak being chosen for the planting, instead of the Siberian elms, green ash or blue spruce that were likely the choices.  I don't have anything against those species (although the same can't be said for the panoply of insect and fungal pests that are effectively wiping them out), but oaks have been criminally under planted for decades, and it's great to see an increased emphasis on planting oaks.

But of I course I wouldn't be me without injected a mild quibble with the article.  If you're planting a hybrid oak are you really planted a "certain species" of tree?  (Then again as longtime readers - note the optimistic/delusional use of the plural - know, I defy anyone to plant an oak that isn't, to one degree or another, a hybrid.)

Some friends and I once ran a marathon relay in Brookings, SD.  The only hills on the course were the man-made ramps to create freeway overpasses. 

New species of oak discovered in Thailand

This is so cool!  I know, I'm always carping about botanists who head out into the woods, see an oak with slight variations from the local population of whatever oak "species" they are studying, and then proceed to name this new variant or "species" after themselves.  Or their girlfriends.  I have always thought Quercus siemsii has a nice ring to it.

But there are actual new species of oak out there for the finding.  It would be incredibly thrilling to discover one.

This one is a Lithocarpus, not a Quercus.  It is not closely related to California's tanbark oak, Notholithocarpus densiflorus despite the fact that tanbark oak used to be classified in the Lithocarpus genus.  I have a half written post on tanbark oak which this story reminds me I need to finish.  Prince - as in the singer - is involved.

This new stone oak, by the way, is Lithocarpus orbicarpus, so unless it was discovered by some dude named Orbi Carpus it was actually named for its physical characteristics and not its discoverer - a promising sign that it's truly a new species and not some botanist's ego trip.

Thanks Lucas!

Oak abuse: Sean Hannity advocates spiking trees

I spend a lot of my time in my truck listening to the radio.  Depending on the time of day and my location, at any given moment I might be listening to sports talk, NPR, local San Joaquin Valley talk, Rush, Hannity or oldies (a.k.a. music I listened to as a kid).  The combination often causes intellectual whiplash.

In the last four presidential elections I have voted for candidates from three different political parties, all with equal conviction.  In my meanderings up and down the radio dial I come across smart liberals, dumb conservatives, dumb liberals and smart conservatives.  (In my world smart = pragmatic and dumb = mindless demagogue... and they come in all political stripes.)  There are two local right-leaning talk show guys in Bakersfield who are great - thoughtful, funny, and able to see other points of view.

Sean Hannity, on the other hand, is an idiot.

I was listening late last week as he proposed to provide a great service for the millions of out-of-work Americans who are disheartened by the weak economy and poor job market.  He actually said this:  If the average house in your area costs $400,000 (as if that's the median home value in most places), then the way to make money in a bad economy is to go out and buy a "fixer upper" that's a little run down for, say, $275,000.  Put another $25,000 and some elbow grease into it and you can quickly sell it for $350,000, turning a tidy profit.  Thank God for Hannity!  Because I am sure there are millions of Americans who are out of work trying to figure out what to do with that $50,000 they have sitting in the bank and the extra money that keeps coming in every month, and here comes Hannity with the answer:  Buy a house!  A $275,000 house!  Make a down payment, somehow get financing without an income, somehow make monthly payments, and somehow come up with the money for new cabinets, stainless steel appliances (yes, he said that) and other improvements.  As a bonus you could then employ all of your children who are also out of work, paying them a wage for helping with remodeling, thusly teaching them the value of hard work.  Jesus wept.

I must have been scarfing lunch on the fly and didn't have a spare hand, because for some reason I didn't immediately change the station.  Hannity segued from that stroke of economic wisdom to a brief - but mentally deranged - discussion of trees.  He decried the fact that he lives on a place where you can be fined $10,000 for cutting down a tree in your own yard.  (For the record I have mixed feelings about such ordinances, but I can definitely see why they exist - because it's because of guys like him.)  He went on to say that the way around these ordinances is to - oopsey! - prune the trees so heavily that they die or even to "spike" the trees.  And I quote, albeit loosely:  "Who's to know?  You can do that you know."

Triple moron!  Spiking trees is a horrific thing to do.  It's meant to injure/maim/kill anyone who cuts down or mills the tree.  It is terrorism.  It doesn't kill trees, but Hannity sure sounded like he thought it did, and was therefore a brilliant idea.  So the guy who hates the fact that he has to get permission to cut down trees on his own property is telling millions of (the most patriotic) Americans that the way to kill them without getting in trouble is to spike them.  Thus exposing tree care professionals in the future tasked with removing them to the possibility of grievous injury.  I wept. 

Thank God for intellectual stimulation of ESPN radio's 24 hour coverage of the latest sports scandal or my brain would literally melt out my ears while driving.

Child allergic to nuts, mom wants oaks in nearby park chopped down

It must be constantly terrifying to be the parent of a child with anaphylaxis-inducing food allergies.  Heck, it's terrifying being the parent of any child, then add to that the constant concern about exposure to foods - sometimes as hidden ingredients in seemingly innocent fare - that could have the direst consequences.

But really.  Read this. A mother of a child with severe nut allergies wants a nearby park to remove four large oak trees.  The mother says this is not a case of a parent simply wanting to bubblewrap her child.  The writer points out - correctly - that she's right; this is a case of a parent wanting to bubblewrap everything her child might be exposed to.

Is this really how we want to interact with our natural environment?

A blue jay can transport an acorn 2 miles.  OK, I made that up because I'm too lazy to find the research.  But the point is a blue jay can carry an acorn a long way.  And then drop it in this little girl's back yard.  What is the right "radius of safety?"  Do we eradicate every squirrel, chipmunk or blue jay that might spread disperse acorns?

This appears to be a case of a single mother (I mean one mother, singular - I don't know anything about her marital status ;-) misplacing her - very justifiable - concern, and it appears that the suggestion has met with an appropriate about of derision, so I won't pile on.  Which is a first for me.  I am not sure what is causing the sudden burst of understanding and kindness!

But it strikes me as terribly sad that even a single human being had this thought in the first place.

Thanks for sending this Lucas!