Mother Nature’s Moment August 2018
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

Over the last week or so we have received a number of calls and have noticed with our own Riverbirch that there are a lot of yellow leaves on the ground. This spring we had an unprecedented spring of cool temperatures and lots of rain, and then more rain. All that weather triggered the trees to produce an equally unprecedented number of leaves, or in tree language “food producing evapo-transpirators” which translated means that leaves not only produce food for the tree from the sun’s energy but they transpire water through the tiny holes they have called stomata.

Live Oak

The Live Oak is so named because it is a tree that is native to the southern climates of the United States and is actually “evergreen”.  We encountered this tree, up close and personal, for the first time, while on our bike ride through Louisiana this fall. Often graced with the softening effects of the spanish moss that hung from its branch tips and the ferns that would grow along its massive horizontal branches, it is without question a quintessential example of enduring arboreal beauty.  While riding one day I stopped and photographed the tree shown here and paced off its size.  It has a 125 foot branch spread and its trunk was 10 feet in diameter!  It made me reflect on the fact that it was alive and probably quite large at the birth of our nation.  A conservative estimate of its age would be between 350 and 450 years old and I felt quite humbled standing below its massive canopy.

The Live Oak was used for ship building and starting in 1799 large stands of southern land covered in Live Oak were purchased by the federal government for naval purposes. The Oak, it has been said, can be compared to our dog friends in its place as man’s companion. Throughout Europe and North America the Oak has a long history of deep religious and magical significance.