The Giants of Bialowieza Forest

Wow, the number of Oak Watch followers continues to grow despite my paltry output of late... thank you!  Or, perhaps, the number of Oak Watch followers continues to grow because of my paltry output of late.  Maybe if I stop writing altogether this will become the most read blog in the world!

Huge thank you to reader Walter for emailing a list of fascinating links.  I will pass them along to you one or two at a time. 

Travel to Poland, to be honest, has never been on my bucket list... until now.  Click here to visit the amazing Bialowieza Forest.  Incredible.

The oaks of Bialowieza - and we're talking about pedunculate/English/common oaks (Quercus robur) - are truly massive.  Quoting from the web site: 

In order to emphasize uniqueness of such trees the term CLASSICAL BIALOWIEZA OAK has been introduced. To bear this proud name an oak must meet the following criteria: the trunk's perimeter of such tree at the height of 130cm should be at least 550cm, the height of trunk up to the first branch should be at least 15 meters, the total trunk's height should exceed 25 meters and the tree's height should be at least 36 meters. While in the Forest there are thousands of oaks with monumental sizes, only 10-20 meet these criteria. I think that nowhere in Poland or even Europe there are such oaks like here, in the Bialowieza Forest. 

 For those of you keeping score at home 550cm in perimeter measured 130cm from the ground equates to about 5ft 8in in d.b.h. (diameter at breast height).  Holy cats.

So take a break this afternoon or evening and travel to Bialowieza Forest, at least via pixels.  The druid's Sistine Chapel.

Olympic Oak in Connellsvile, PA

I always say that every oak tells a story, it's just that we know some of the stories and we don't know others.  One English oak in Connellsville, PA tells a truly remarkable story.

1936.  Berlin.  Jesse Owens has already trampled claims of Aryan supremacy (and then I did it again 50 years later simply by being Aryan and a whole lot less than supreme).

John Woodruff, a gangly, inexperienced youth of 19 is competing for the USA at 800 meters.  A combination of a very slow pace, poor track positioning and a bunch of white dudes who don’t want to see another African American triumph mean Woodruff is completely boxed in.  Not wanting to risk disqualification by pushing his way free, he comes to a complete stop, lets the field pass him by, sprints to the outside and wins the race going away.

He arrived back home to Connellsville, PA with two mementoes of the ’36 games:  His gold medal and an English oak (Quercus robur) seedling.

He planted the seedling oak at his high school track (click on the link and scroll down).  A couple of things struck me about the photograph and the article.  The tree is 76 years old.  People always tend to overestimate the age of oak trees, based on the underlying assumption that they are extremely slow growing.  Ask anyone how old this tree is without letting them read the commemorative plaque and I guarantee they’ll say 100 to 150 years old, or more.  They would assume that it predated the stadium and was already so big that the stadium builders wanted to save it (as if).

The other thing is that I would take mild issue with the writer’s claim that English oak are, “not especially fond of western Pennsylvania’s frigid winters.”  The native range of English oak spans the better part of Europe from Scandinavia and Russia to Italy’s toe.  Depending on the seed source English oak are very well equipped for cold weather.  For many years I have been exchanging acorns with a friend in the Pittsburgh area who has a thriving English oak in his back yard.  (By "exchanging" I mean that he kindly sends me acorns while I send him Quercus doodly x squat.)

Further to my first point about growth rate:  I just looked up the range of English oak to make my second point and found a page from a British arboretum with thiswonderfully English turn of phrase:  “Popularly supposed to be slow growing, really quite fast, up to 60cm in a year for a few years.  In good soil to 20 x 2m by 50 years. Girth increase slowing from 4cm to 2.5cm annually by 250 years, then decreasing.”   

Ah yes, I can see where the slow growth thing comes from:  After strapping on an inch of diameter per year (a rate which rivals loblolly pine) for the better part of THREE CENTURIES the growth rate does tend to taper off.  What a slacker.

John Woodruff’s track career was shortened by World War II.  He served our country with distinction both in WWII and in Korea, and had a very distinguished career in sociology and social work.

The Chapel-Oak of Allouville-Bellefosse

Amazing oak to get your week started: The Chapel-Oak of Allouville-Bellefosse.

... although something tells me that treatment of this tree over the years might have violated one or two of the things I learned in my Urban Forestry courses.  Apparently, when the already-500 year-old tree re-sprouted after a lightening strike/fire that hollowed it out in the late 1600s the people of the village considered it a miracle (since oaks, of course, rarely withstand fire... gah).  And proceeded to memorialize the tree's miraculous survival by... subjecting it to an incredible amount of additional abuse.  For instance I think I see an incorrect pruning cut about 1/3 of the way up on the left.  The staircase and shingles might be problematic as well.

It is cool, though.

California black oak acorns: I was right

Recently I tasted some raw California black oak (Q. kelloggii) acorns - acorns that had dropped from some of the same trees from which John Muir might have gathered up a handful for an afternoon snack.  They had a strong flavor of tannin, but the aftertaste on the tongue was very short lived.  This led me to speculate that the tannins in California black oak acorns are highly soluble in water and could be quickly and easily leached away.

I finally got around to testing my theory.  Turns out - and let me tell you I'm as shocked as you and find myself on completely unfamiliar ground here - I was right.

I shelled a handful of them, and coarsely chopped the nut meats.  I dropped them into a small pot of boiling water, and boiled them for about 3-5 minutes, at which point I drained them and tasted a few.  The bitter tannin flavor was still there, but already greatly diminished.  After repeating the process the bitterness was almost completely gone.  After a grand total of 6 to 10 minutes of boiling I had acorns - from the supposedly bitter red/black oak group - that are sweeter than many of the supposedly sweet acorns of the white oak group I have tried.  Here I'm thinking particularly of English/common oak, (Q. robur).

In "Use of Acorns for Food in California: Past, Present and Future," David Bainbridge gives the nutrient content of California black oak acorns as:

Water - 9.0%
Protein - 4.56%
Fat - 17.97%
Carbs - 55.48%

That will keep you going when hiking/mapping/preserving the splendor of the Sierra!