Oak Trees with Zarah Wyly

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Hello and welcome to Golden State naturalist, a podcast for anyone who's ever wondered what is this magnificent tree I'm looking at? I'm Michelle Fullner and today I'm going to help you answer that question because today's episode is all about oak trees. And sure there are a lot of magnificent trees out there, especially here in California but oaks are my favorite and I'll get into why that is a little later. But making this episode has given me even more reasons to love these trees and my guests. Zarah Wyly is the perfect person to guide us through such topics as the staggering variety of wildlife supported by oak trees, the types of oaks present in California. What makes a tree an oak tree acorn flower recipes, what people can do and are doing to restore oaks to the landscape and what oak trees have to do with the Declaration of Independence. Zarah has spent the past 19 years advocating for educating about in planting locally native oak trees all across the Sacramento region with the Sacramento tree Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to growing and stewarding Sacramento's urban forest. Zarah's education is in Environmental Horticulture and urban forestry. She did the restoration ecology emphasis throughout her career she estimates that she has helped plant or be part of programming that planted 30 to 35,000 Trees personally planting about 2500 of those and estimates that about 75 to 80% of those were native oak trees. Zarah uses both she and they pronouns. So you'll hear me switch back and forth between those throughout this episode. I cannot wait to share this interview with you. But first, let me give a quick shout out to everyone who has rated and reviewed the podcast ratings and reviews make my day and let me know that there are people out there listening to and enjoying the show. And they keep Golden State naturalist up in the charts, which helps more people discover the show, I cannot tell you how much that helps as an independent podcaster. Today I'm going to read you a short and very sweet review. This is from Wayland or Oh island. It says a great place to learn about California nature only four episodes in and I'm totally looking forward to lots of future episodes. So thank you so much for that you don't have to write a big long review to have a big impact. Another thing you can do to help me and the podcast is to become a patron. My current goal is to go a little farther afield and interview naturalists from all across the state and Patreon is the most direct way to make that happen for as little as $4 a month you can also get access to all kinds of video and audio extras as well as behind the scenes about how the show is getting made folks who sign up as oak level patrons that's the highest level because I love oak trees before the end of April we'll get a special little gift for me in may just make sure to include your mailing address when you sign up. I promise I'm not creepy and I will only use your address to mail your present. That's it. You can find me on Patreon at patreon.com/michelle Fullner. That's Michelle with two L's and Fullner is full N E R Okay, let's get to the episode and learn about Native oak trees and what incredible additions they are to our landscape in California and beyond with ecologist oak enthusiast and all around great human Zarah Wyly on this episode of Golden State naturalist.

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If you look at the tops of the oaks, they're just starting to leaf out, especially the valley oaks. Of course, we're standing under an interior Live Oak which is an evergreen native oak, so it already has leaves, but the rest don't. They're starting to wake up.

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I met up with Zerah in Folsom, California, right at the end of February and things were just starting to turn green again. And it's this sort of yellowy green, these brand new leaves.

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Yeah, I love that early spring color is really nice. And right after those come out, then you'll start to see the flowers. And then we'll all start sneezing and March.

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What are the flowers look like on an oak tree? Oak trees aren't known for their flower displays. So what do they look like?

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Right? So, oaks have both male and female flowers to put it in a very generic way. So there's the ones that create the pollen, this is the male flowers, and they're kind of long, dangly Bobs, they're called Cat kins. They're kind of fun to look at. And then the female flowers, the ones that receive the pollen and turn into an acorn are very tiny. You have to really look closely and carefully in early spring to see them because once they've received that pollen or not, they don't all get fertilized. They either swell and turn to an acorn or they fall off and you can find them on the ground if you really know what you're looking for. But they're teeny tiny like the point of a pencil.

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Oh, wow. So before this interview, I had seen Cat kins on oak trees, but I just thought that was the whole flower. I had no idea there were these little teeny tiny flowers in addition to that, and if you're not sure or what a cat can looks like. It really does look like a cat's tail that's dangling down over a countertop or off the side of a bed or something. And so when I looked at the etymology for this, I was fully expecting it to mean cat tail, but it actually means kitten in obsolete Dutch, so go figure, but the definition for it is a flowering spike of trees such as Willow and Hazel catkins are typically downy pendulous, composed of flowers of a single sex and wind pollinated and what color are the flowers?

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So they're the same really bright spring green on most of the oaks, at least here in Sacramento. There's some other oaks that you get some different color variations more gray or more reddish, even.

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Okay, so there's where we're standing. There's two massive Valley oak trees. And then there's a whole lot of younger trees, which you had something to do with what happened here.

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Yeah, so we're a longtime hum humbug Creek in Folsom. And this town developed and kept a lot of open Creek ways and bikeways to support their iPads. And also to retain some of these really majestic ancient giant oak trees. Some people call them heritage oaks around here, but that's really not very scientific term, it's more of a, whether or not you have to protect them. There's all these things that have to do with heritage oaks. But these are very large, you know, five to six foot wide trunks, probably hundreds of years old, and the rest of the younger trees here. So this place was really soil was scraped and moved about to contain the creek in the put in the bike path and to do the development. And other than these two really large, very old oak trees, there was not much going on here. So in 2005, the tree foundation worked with the city to plant trees along the creek way, and then also to go along the bike path because we all know how enjoyable it is to hike and walk on a bike path and Sacramento in the summer, if there are not trees. And actually there was not when we started working here,

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Zarah and SEC tree, making the world a better place. It looks like a really nice, beautiful young forest now with two really massive older trees in it. And in case you're local, and you're wondering where this is, it's right across the street from Folsom kids play park. So definitely check that out, especially if you'd like to ride a bike or if you have kids that would enjoy a playground.

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And then there's another section of trees that's kind of out in this open field. And that was another project that I believe was done by regional transit for their light rail line, when they built it up to Folsom in the late 2000s. And where do you source all those acorns from? setup? I know the answer to we Shakedown squirrels. No, since Gosh, 2010, the tree foundation for our nursery, we realized we weren't able to purchase oaks that were good quality that actually we knew the sourcing of a lot of the stuff that people sell in the nursery trade as a native oak is not necessarily it's some sort of strange hybrid because they just picked up acorns from who knows where, gotcha. So we decided it would be really fun to work with the community and gather on acorns so we can make sure we had the best ones and that we grew really good trees for projects like this. And so we've been doing that since then, with volunteers every fall, we scan for about in the forest and learn about oak trees and go pick up lots of acorns, which is really fun way for people to connect, because you see them and a lot of kids pick them up and play with them and put them in their pockets. I know I did, I still do, they still end up in my washing machine on a regular basis. But it's not if you slow down and actually like think about the process of this tiny little seed becoming these enormous oak trees, especially here where you can see seeds on the ground like we're finding today. And then these kind of teenage trees, and then the grandmother oak, it's really a nice way to connect to people and realize this is a process we all need to engage with because it takes much longer than a human lifetime.

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So I actually got to participate in the acorn harvest last year, which was super fun. And I loved it because we got to go out into the forest and Zarah actually taught us the different types of oak trees that are local to the area. And there's a lot of things to think about when you're collecting acorns. And one of them is oaks are as we mentioned before wind pollinated. So not only do you need to make sure you have the right type of oak tree, but you also need to make sure that it is physically isolated enough from other oak trees that might hybridize it so that you get the actual variety of acorn that you're looking for. The other cool thing about this project is that the acorns are then given to elementary school classes to grow into little seedlings, which is super cool. I love that it's cool that kids get to help reforest a city that they might grow up in and actually get to see those trees as they grow older. So these trees have been here for 1517 years something like that and they are there you know, I mean, they're pretty big. Certainly, you know, not approaching with the grandmother Okay, looks like but they're filling out they're not sad. Wings anymore.

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Yeah, they're definitely providing shade I these are between about 22 and 25 feet tall, with trunks on them between about what eight, I saw one that was close to about 25 inches, which is pretty good size, they were planted as seedlings from the tree foundation nursery. So these were really the best trees and the smallest sized trees possible that we can plant. One thing that you should totally look at. So we have the teenage trees along the bikeway. And they're all you know, they have some variety in size, but they're all you know, 2025 feet tall. And then you see the other trees that were planted eight years later. They're all about the same size, right? The ones that were planted out, by the other project were in these huge 24 inch boxes, oh, and were planted later. And our little tiny seedlings are way bigger and like actually a lot healthier than they're still Wow. So planting the smallest tree you can tolerate is really helpful. If you're looking, you know, these trees don't get irrigated, they don't, they don't get much care. So if you want them to grow that way you really want to plant little baby trees

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is that because then they kind of grew up used to it like they were but lack of a better way of putting it.

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It's all about roots. And it's the part we can't see. And then it's hard to imagine. So the these oak trees have grown these massive root systems that we can't see. And the other ones were grown to be big in a box and kept having their root systems just mangled and kept small. And so it's going to take them a lot longer to adjust and work out of that. If they haven't managed to you'll see there's a bunch of dead trees in there. That just didn't make it. So allowing the root system to grow really healthy and big will help you get a bigger tree.

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Choose natives.org points out a whole bunch of reasons why planting a smaller tree is actually a way better decision. So saplings are affordable, low effort planting, you do it yourself because it's quick and easy. A tiny planting hole means less disturbance to nearby established tree roots virtually no root issues such as girdling or severing able to develop a healthy root color growth can be equal to or faster than a large caliber tree. So you might even find your little tiny tree catching up with a bigger one possible to find locally sourced and local eco type saplings easy to start a tree from seed yourself environmentally greener because you're transporting a lower weight or maybe not even transporting at all opportunity to selectively prune limbs for healthy tree structure. And it's simple and inexpensive to plant a future forest all at once or over time as the trees grow up together. So there's so many reasons to plant a teeny tiny tree rather than planting a bigger, more established one. Another reason is that even though it seems like oaks grow slowly at first, that's actually because a lot of the growth is happening underground, where you aren't seeing a lot of the growth, like Zarah points out is in the roots. And so you're not seeing all that growth that's happening. And if you take that tree and you transplant it, you've undone all of that early work that that tree was working so hard to do. But let's jump now from the beginning of an oak trees life all the way to the end of it. So we stopped by the mother oak. And you were saying that it's it's declining? And how can you tell?

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Well, I've been watching this tree for 17 years, because she's a really, really amazing specimen, really large tree at these big gnarly branches that reached down to the ground. And what you can't see that I know is that some of these very large limbs have come off of the tree in the last few years. And it's very normal for a really old ancient tree like this to have lots of big logs and branches laying around. Because that's what they do and they get really old is they keep from completely falling apart. By dropping the load when it gets too heavy, kind of a smart thing to do. It makes it that's one of the reasons that people don't like to have oak trees that are this big and old over their houses or their playgrounds, or their places where there's things to hit like people because that is what they do. It often happens in late summer, or when the they have a really large acorn crop, they get really heavy. And yeah, this tree just hasn't been looking as vigorous. It's definitely leafing out which is good, but it's been dropping more and more branches. There's some big cracks starting to be on the main trunk. There's more holes further down. But oak trees take a really long time to die. Everybody. I've heard a few times that you know it takes at least 10 years for big oak today. And another thing that happened last, the last two falls this tree has had pretty good acorn crops, which for a really old tree I have not found to be very common, although I have seen it happen and then those trees declined pretty quickly and died. So

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well. Last big push last effort for reproduction.

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Yeah, although you'll notice if you look around Do you see any baby oak ceilings? Now there aren't any. And well, I mean, it's probably a whole bunch of different reasons. We have a lot of non native grass cover here which would be competing with anything. This place is highly disturbed by people. I know that they've been grazing it some which is really hard on little teeny tiny baby trees. As,

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as there are points out grazing these areas can be really tough on little trees because the grazing animals come in and eat them up. But the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service says that grazing lands are a major source of watershed filtration, groundwater recharge, and carbon sequestration providing improved water and air quality. I've seen some grazing lands in Oak savannas actually just put little cages around seedling oak trees, which seems like it might be a good compromise between those two things. But unfortunately for the little seedlings where Sarah and I were grazers, we're not the only thing out to get them.

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There was a fire. Yeah, there's a lot of reasons a lot of things can kill a baby, a baby seedling, we also have had these terribly dry winters that we're enjoying right now. And if if the acorns just fall on the ground and start to germinate, they'll pretty much dry and, and die out before they can really get a good hold. So they really need to be like tucked in somewhere. And one of the reasons it's sad that they took those big logs is that often with these really old trees, where you'll see their new trees coming up is under logs and fallen wood and other protected places around the mother tree. Because it's trapping moisture there. It's trapping moisture, it's protecting it from being stepped on and eaten. And it's just seems to give it a little, a little spot a little more protection to get going. Gotcha. So and there's actually been studies recently that mother trees can recognize their own offspring. Because you know, underground, all of the roots are connected. You know, this is this is an oak superhighway of information here, all of these oak trees are connected to one another through their roots, and through, you know, fungi, there's all these great things under the soil we can't see, and that they'll actually help the seedlings grow bigger by connecting their root systems and through the fungi to get them growing, which is really fascinating. And we should have guessed that right? Of course, they're gonna help their babies. We don't give trees enough credit. Now they're very smart.

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Okay, so you might have noticed that Zarah talks about oak trees, almost like they're people, which I love. To me, this conveys not a mistaken idea about what trees are or aren't but a deep reverence for the aspects of them that are often dismissed or overlooked, or aspects that are often more like us than we'd like to acknowledge. After all, it's easier to cut down a tree we see as an object than when we see as a living thing who can recognize and help her own offspring. And I think this concept is also resonant for a lot of us on a personal level. I mentioned earlier that oaks are my favorite trees. And in large part that's because of the time I spent exploring the oak woodland on my great grandfather's property when I was seven and eight years old, and my family lived with him. At that age, the forest feels so alive as to almost seem sentient. And there was one particular tree, a coast Live Oak, if I can trust my memory after 30 years that grew sideways on a hill, it had a big, thick trunk that you could walk right up and my brother and I often played there jumping off the side and rolling down the hill. And we also rested there, and it became my thinking spot, and I grew very attached to that tree. And here's the thing in a scientific sense, I know that tree doesn't have retinas or eardrums or neurons that can fire in recognition of a person. It doesn't have cognition, but in a spiritual sense, I feel a deep connection to it, and a relationship with it almost as if the tree is a family member. I think this is a deeply human way of thinking about the natural world. And I think that the ancient wisdom in a more anthropomorphic view of nature actually got us to many of the same truths and conclusions that science has led us do now. For example, my feeling that these trees are my family members seems less insane when we realize that we share 50% of our DNA with trees, Robin wall Kimmerer writes about a similar concept in her book braiding sweetgrass, in which she discusses Indigenous ways of knowing, including looking at plants as teachers and ties this to her scientific ways of knowing as a biologist, so check that book out if this concept is interesting to you. Okay, I know I got a little in the weeds with this one. But I wanted to share a little about why these trees are so important to me personally, and also advocate for embracing our intuition and the science at the same time, because they aren't as mutually exclusive. As we sometimes assume. After all, being a naturalist is largely about observation and presence, both of which underpin both scientific knowing and transcendent moments of awe. And how do we use those powers of observation when looking at old oak trees? Let's hear what Zira has to say. So if you didn't, if you hadn't been watching this tree for so long, and you were just walking around, and you were looking at the health of the tree, like what kinds of signs would you look for for an old oaks health?

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Yeah, there's lots of things fungi, they have a lot of things growing out of them. You can look for lots of like cracking and branches,

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chinos or like rotting wood if if the fungi are growing out of them. Yeah,

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that's usually what happens is these trees end up just totally fall. apart and you'll see there's woodpecker holes, there's little bird nests in here. All of those are ways for pathogens to get in. And over time, you know, if you get water and moisture and fungus and damage, you know, at some point, it'll become too much. And usually, like I said, what happens is they totally fall apart. Sometimes they'll just right from the inside, you'll see trees where they were this big, and then they fell apart, and then they've re sprouted. So it's, it's pretty amazing. Unfortunately, we frequently decide that it becomes a hazard and then we just cut them down. Whereas if they wanted to fence this off from people, which would be might let it live longer, but we'd probably be sad for people because you get this great ability to experience this really cool tree, they could probably leave it forever. But at some point, they will probably make the decision that since this is an open public space, that having it fall apart on people is not a good thing to have happen. Yeah, very reasonable.

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Very sad. Sad. The coexistence problem.

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Yeah. And that's often why you'll see little fences or like, you know, in state parks, they do this sensitive area. Right? You know, that's really wise for you to respect that because an expert went in there and said, you know, this tree is amazing, but it's probably going to fall apart. So we should not have encouraged people to stand under it and take their family photos with it. This

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giant sequoia with trunk size branches. One could fall down at any time.

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Yeah, exactly. Trees do sometimes hurt people they don't mean to. And so it's important to be thoughtful when you see those kinds of things. Just keep yourself safe.

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It's always a good idea to be aware of your surroundings in nature. And if you're paying attention in an oak woodland, you might notice some very strange growths on the branches, stems or leaves of some of the trees. What are those? Alright, so we took a few paces away from the grandmother oak and we're looking at a much younger Is this a Valley oak to Yes. And it's covered in Oak galls just covered in these everywhere from like the size of a nickel to like almost the size not quite size my fist but like getting close. So what's going on with these? Where are they? Why is this happening? This is part of the tree or is it something different

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sort of it's I mean, it was grown by the tree. So I've heard these called Oak apples a lot, which I think is a pretty good visual for people who can't see what we're looking at right now. And especially in winter with the Valley oak is a deciduous tree, it looks very strange. It's got all these round balls hanging off of it. And at this point, most of them are black in color. And that's because they're actually being infected by a fungus. The fresh ones, if you see them in the spring, they can go through a very almost Green Apple Color to even bright red colored, and they're very fleshy and fresh. And what's happening is that a little teeny tiny insect called the parasitoid Wasp laid an egg in one of the stem the cells here in just the branches and that trick the tree into growing this funny growth and it's got, you can see actually some of them have little pinholes. That's where the Wasp came out of its little nest here and fell into the ground where they then become their flighted version of at least for this one. This is the oak Apple doll.

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So it provides like a protective space for the juvenile wasps and does it provide food for them too?

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Yeah, so I think that they do. No do not I don't I don't actually know about that. Some of the parasitoid wasps do eat and some of them don't Okay, and so there's a really there's actually a lot of different ones. There's a lot that make really interesting structures on oak leaves. You know in the summer you can find them especially late summer that are red and pink and purple and fuzzy look like funny hats. But I don't know specifically about this one if I'm not mistaken. This is Andhra kiss Quercus California kiss is the name which is basically like the Valley oak indicus parasitoid wasp.

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Okay, so I looked it up. And yes, this is Andrew because quirk is californicus Andric is Quercus California has okay, I'm really proud for being able to say that anyways, Zerah was completely right, because they've been right about everything so far. Yes, the larvae do grow inside the Gauls and feed on the gall material. Another fun fact this is according to bug guide.net. Only pathogenic females are known for the species. So that means that there are only females there are no males, or at least no male individuals have ever been found. So that's crazy. Also, the range of these little gals is all the way from Washington and Oregon through California and into the northern reaches of Mexico. But there are actually a lot of different types of oak gall wasps and

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within the oak families, they do tend to have their own wasps that are attached to them so you don't necessarily find the same goes on here on this Valley oak, Quercus lobata like on the interior Live Oak over there. There's a really cool one that we get in the Sacramento Valley on the interior live oak that is like red and round with a point and it's like, spotted with yellow and it looks crazy. It looks Like somebody hung up fishing lures something in the oak tree,

how big is it?

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It's pretty good size. They get to be about, you know the size of a ping pong ball.

I don't think I've ever seen one. Because there's so cool.

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There's some that are pointy and look like puffer fish. And yeah, if you get into an oak tree and start looking around, you'll find all sorts of stuff. There's actually other some other goals on this street here. There's some other STEM goals is just like long gated large places,

lumps on the stems.

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And then here's an old this almost gone. This is a button golf ball, which is one of my favorites. You can't see it. It's coming apart.

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I didn't get a good look at these in person. So I just looked up a picture and the look exactly like a bunch of teeny tiny little Cheerios plastered across the back part of an oak leaf actually looks exactly like the floor underneath my two year old daughter's chair after she's been eating Cheerios, and my dog is sick of Cheerios, and he won't eat them anymore. Come on, Chewy, do us a solid. These button goals however, do act as a food source for somebody

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because they actually exude honey do and they're tended by ants. And then late summer you'll find honey bees actually gathering food from an oak tree. So that's really pollinators actually can eat off of trees to really cool.

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So yeah, it's it's funny because I always just I didn't know until I don't know, probably in the summer, or late summer, early fall when we went out looking at Oak trees, that there were different types of girls, I thought that these oak apples were oak galls, right. Like that was my knowledge of them. Yeah. And then we were looking at leaves on the leaves. There were these little tiny they look like sea creatures. They look like some of these stars or, you know, anemones are just crazy, colorful, bright, little things stuck to these leaves. And I had no idea that those were oak galls.

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And there's 1000s of species. I mean, if you wanted to find your own species that no one's ever found like galls on oaks in California, you that's probably not a bad place to go searching around, because there's a lot of diversity. And you know that probably 1000s 1000s I think the last thing I read was this at least 5000 insects that have a very close relationship with California's native oak trees. How do the oak tree feel about that? Well, so like this tree, this tree has a lot. And so it's kind of overwhelming. It's taking so I mean, it does take energy from the tree to do this. I have seen trees where it's just so like this. This is moderate. I've seen trees there. It's ridiculous. They have so many that they're clearly being stunted. But in general, when you when you look at it, it's not a parasitic relationship

cases. Does the tree get anything out of it?

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I don't know. That's a good question. I like to think that they're really happy supporting, you know, this whole world because right, they're making these insects and other things, eat those insects. And you know, so this is part of their supporting this whole series of, you know, animal interactions that otherwise would not exist. So I think they're happy about it. Yeah, that's kind of decorative, too. Right? Is Yeah, kids throw men each other. I mean, that's, I have vivid memories of that as a kid. And you can make Encanto Have you heard that one? Oh, so there's like, this is not verified. People say that the Declaration of Independence was signed with oak Colleen. I don't know if that's true. Wow. Please don't call me and be like that is not true.

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This is true. According to archives.gov. It's the National Archives website. Somebody named Timothy Matlack was a clerk in the Pennsylvania State House and he was the scribe in charge of writing the Declaration of Independence, and it says the iron gall ink the kind typically used in Matlack state included tannic acid from Oak galls iron from nails or iron scraps, a binder, often gum Arabica and sometimes a colorant light in color. When it was applied, the ink darkened as it oxidized to an intense purplish black over time, iron gall inks age to a warm brown, which is why we see the warm brown color on the declaration today. Unfortunately, Congress traveled with this document a whole heck of a lot early on, and it was pretty rough on it. And so the ink didn't hold up super well. I don't know if it would have held up better if it was a different type of ink, or if it was just the travel, but that's why it is so faded today. You said the little wasps are tiny, like how big are we talking a few millimeters or Yeah,

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they're really small. They're very hard to see with the naked eye and really in, but most of them are really, really small. So you say Wasp, and people like Oh no, I'm gonna get stung. And it's like, you're never gonna see the insect. They're very small.

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That explains why I've never seen one before because always wondered I've always like I've been around a lot of oak trees have seen a lot of girls have never seen the creature that makes me explained it. Yeah. And we're standing right next to some native elderberries. Yes. And they're kind of just springing back to life right now.

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I'm pretty sure that this area burned which is why those look especially gnarly, is it there was a little Spotfire here but yeah, it's it's springtime. They're looking very energetic hoofing up out. Elderberries and valley oaks are always friends. They're very, very frequently in close proximity.

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You Is it just because they like the same conditions? Or do they have a relationship where they help each other?

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I don't think so i No one has probably, actually for that. And for that, I wouldn't be surprised if they're all communicating underground and fungal network. But

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I just want you to know that I Googled elderberry and Valley oak relationship, and I didn't find anything relevant. So I don't know.

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Especially with the valley oaks they like, we're in this area. And Folsom is kind of unique, right, we have much thicker soil than in most places, we have a lot more moisture, because we're, we're kind of next to the creek and then next to this overflow channel. So yeah, this is a perfect place for all of our activities.

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At this point, Zehra. And I found a very nice comfortable log to sit down on in full view of the beautiful grandmother oak for the full interview, you'll hear that in just a minute after this break.

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Okay, before we get to the full interview, I just want to plug one more thing. And this is not a paid ad. It's just something that I think is really cool and worthwhile. And that's the city nature challenge. So on the city nature Challenge website, it says started in 2016, as a competition between San Francisco and Los Angeles, the city nature challenge, CNC has grown into an international event motivating people around the world to find and document wildlife in their cities. So basically, this is an opportunity, it's really easy. All you have to do is get the I naturalist app, and then you go and you take pictures of wildlife that you see in your city. And that could be plants. It could be animals, it could be fungi, it could be evidence of life. So like some feathers that you see showing that a bird was there, any of those count, you take a picture, you upload it on the AI naturalist, and that's it, it's super easy. That's April 29, through May 2. And then the second part is May 3 through May 8, where people go in and identify what was found. Now this is a friendly competition among now a whole bunch of cities all the way across the world. I looked at the map, and there are pins on many continents, maybe all of them except for Antarctica. I love this for so many reasons. One of which is just that, of course, a competition between NorCal and SoCal is going to end up blowing up and being worldwide. That's super cool. I love that. And also, it's an opportunity for everyday people like you and me to go out and observe things. And then that information can actually be used by scientists who are researching plants and animals and other life maybe in your area. It's incredibly useful. And I've heard of scientists doing really cool things with it, like studying which groups of species are isolated, and people are studying the effects of climate change using a naturalist. So it's a really cool form of citizen science and something I definitely encourage you to get involved with. Okay, now on to the full interview. Alright, so we found this beautiful log to sit down on, it's huge and comfortable, and I've been wanting to not sit on it in the summer.

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Yes, there's rattlesnakes out here. So this is a good time of

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year if you want to come sit on a log and gaze at this beautiful tree. But I was gonna ask you how did you get interested in oak trees?

2

Well, I've always liked oak trees as a kid I would definitely pick up acorns and feed them to my pet goats. And I remember vividly like wearing my cowboy boots like smashing them. But you know, like heels and your cowboy boots, you can smash things really well smashing lots of acorns that way and then, you know, the birds and other stuff, enjoying that. But then I after school, I was studying at UC Davis and I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian, but sick animals make me sad. So I decided to not go that route, and was really enjoying the nexus between horticulture and ecology. So that's what I studied. And then I was looking for a job and it's like, what's the second one a tree Foundation, they needed somebody to go plant oak trees, and I was like, I am up for that. I am your person. Do it. And I've been here ever since.

1

That's fantastic. So did you climb a lot of oak trees when you were a kid?

2

I mostly climbed redwoods. Oh, did you grow up in the Santa Cruz Mountains? Okay, so it's it's a it's a very interesting forest. So there's there are a lot of oak trees there. But I mostly claimed redwoods.

1

Nice. And this we're gonna go real basic here. What is an oak tree?

2

Oh, an oak tree. Excellent. So an oak tree is a tree that produces an acorn and it is in a specific plant family where that's the main trait. There's one in California the the tan oak is not quite in the same lineage is the Quercus oaks. It's in its own little branch. But it's not really important because anytime you have a plant that's making this huge fruit it's really important and impactful on the rest of the ecosystem because it's got this big yummy delicious nut Ready to eat? So yeah, oaks are anything within Quercus. And it's a complicated family. It's it's all over the world, mostly in the northern hemisphere. California has a lot of oaks it has at least 20. You can argue about what's the species or not, because there's some things that once we're getting into the genetics of things, which is happening, currently, they're deciding, oh, that's actually not its own species. It's a hybrid of these three trees that are in this weird place. So if you notice that it has an acorn, you can call it an oak tree and be very confident. All

1

right, great. Is there another way to identify them? Because I mean, you look at the leaves, and they're radically different from each other. And you look at the bark, and it looks really different. So if it's not the time of year for acorns, is there a way to tell?

2

It's much more challenging? Yeah, no, I would say just for a layperson, no, too much. It's too much to learn. I mean, there's not that many oak trees in California, so it's reasonable. Like I said, there's about 20 some odd, and most people live in cities, most forests in California, actually, the City Forest is much more diverse than your natural forest. So yeah, I think the best thing to do is if you're really like, oh, I can't I'm curious about the oak trees is just learn what's in your vicinity, and then go from there.

1

So I can see why Sara says to just learn the types of oaks that you're around because there is so much diversity in every aspect that I can think of, of oak trees, ranging from their size, which can be really small and shrub like to just massive and the type of bark that you might see on the tree might be smooth, it might be dark brown, it might be more grayish. There's all kinds of different colors that might be really rough. Some oak trees are actually cork oaks. So their bark is literally cork that goes into your wine bottle or to your olive oil stopper, which is of course radically different from that super smooth bark that you see on some oak trees than the leaves are a whole nother issue. So some of the leaves are very round and smooth. Some have a lot of lobes, some are a bit more curvy, some arse Biney and look like holly leaves. So there's not really a surefire way of identifying an oak tree except that they all have acorns. So if you see acorns on a tree, you can be sure it's an oak tree. But there's a lot of reasons why you might see an oak tree with no acorns. For example, it's the wrong time of year or the oak tree isn't old enough to have started producing acorns yet. So I think Sarah's advice to just learn maybe the most common types of oak trees in your region is going to be really helpful if you're trying to identify the trees and one of the most common types of oak trees here in Sacramento and also in a lot of lower elevation areas in the state are Valley oak trees. The we're looking at a Valley oak tree right now is huge. And we're surrounded by Valley oak trees, and I'm noticing just how massive this beautiful tree is. Our Valley oak trees bigger than oak trees are, can they all get that big? Or what's what's the biggest oak tree that we have in California?

2

Well, that would be the valley. It is yeah. Well, there's there's a little bit of argument, I hate to say, when you start measuring things like people are like, Well, I found one that's more massive, right? It's generally accepted that the Valley oak is the one that gets the largest, it gets the tallest in the broadest of any oak in California. And you know, we have some oaks that are that most people would not even call trees, their shrub size. They're very small. And it kind of makes sense. If you think about where the valley oaks live, right. They live on our very best soils in the very bottoms of valleys where they get a lot of sunshine and water. Yeah. Yeah. Which is great. I mean, you notice it's huge. They're also at least for the Sacramento region, that is the species of tree that is currently sequestering the most carbon for us. Oh, great. So yes, redwoods Redwoods in California, they definitely get more. But redwoods are not appropriate for the Sacramento Valley. Even though if you look around, you'll see them everywhere.

Right? Okay, why aren't they appropriate for this area,

2

they need a lot of water. And they at some points, they just get really unhappy here. We also have in various places, there's things in the water that they don't like that make them look bad. They're just not really climate appropriate. And in most places, when they look good, it's because people are using huge amount of potable water to keep them healthy. And I would argue that that's not reasonable in California anymore.

1

So if you live closer to the coast, then maybe plan to coast redwood. Yeah, but if you live somewhere in the Central Valley, then maybe think about some oak trees.

2

Yeah. And also, if you really like to have birds and wildlife and actually be part of your ecosystem, the oaks that are that and the redwoods are not so much so it's really important to have the plants to support your wildlife. And if you don't have locally native plants, you're gonna make a food desert for for those cute little birds and nobody has a favorite wildlife, right. Like I really liked to see the bluebirds. You're only gonna see them in places where we have enough wild native places for them to get the insects that they need to eat right to the bugs.

1

And does it matter if people plant native oaks or is like an oak tree gonna do the same thing because it makes an acorn or do they need to be local ones.

2

So if you really get down to the nitty gritty, it's best to have what's local to you. Oaks overall in North America are by far the most important tree species for biodiversity. They support the most organisms and the most complex food webs. There's a lot of great stuff happening with Douglas tell him he is probably the one person who is evil and realizing this the best Okay, throughout. He writes books about making your your own yard habitat. And that's really the best thing we can do as far as supporting wherever we're at.

1

So Zerah emailed me later about this book that they were thinking about, and it is called the nature of oaks by Douglas Telhami. So I wouldn't bought this book. And I was interested in it. I was planning on kind of skimming through it to research this episode a little bit. No, I started it, and I couldn't stop reading it. And I finished the entire book. And I've written all over it and I've got a bunch of sticky notes and it is so good. And if I wasn't going to get hammered for copyright infringement, I would seriously read you way more of it than you probably want to hear without just getting the audio book yourself. So in the book Douglas Tallamy goes into many of the species that are super important and are supported by oak trees. Here's a little excerpt for you. I promise I'll keep it short. During their impressive lifespan, a single tree will drop up to 3 million acorns and serve as a lifeline for countless creatures, including dozens of bird species, rodents, bears, raccoons, opossums, rat snakes, Fence lizards, several butterflies, hundreds of moths, Centipede, gall wasps and other predators and parasitoids, weevils, myriad spiders, and dozens more species of arthropods, mollusks and analysts that depend on oak leaf litter for nourishment and protection. He also echoes what Zehra said, by seeing oak support more forms of life and more fascinating interactions than any other tree genus in North America. So go play to an oak tree and go buy this book. You won't regret it. So

2

if you're planning a redwood, you're not necessarily going to see that cute bluebird because it's like, what is this redwood? No, I am looking for an oak tree and all of the little worms and bugs that are associated with oak trees, because that's where I get my food. And that's my habitat. Right?

1

That makes sense. So speaking of redwood trees and oak trees, one we would call probably a forest and when we would call a woodland, right, yeah. What's the difference between a forest and woodland? Oh, I'm

2

sure there's a scientific explanation for that, that I don't necessarily know off the top of my head. Forests are most generally when you're talking about like coniferous trees, redwoods, you know, things that you would consider a Christmas tree when you look at them. And woodlands are often much more spaced out and have a different shape. Things that are more rounder, or Messier trees is the really basic way of looking at it. They operate differently, even though both are super important for California. And they're found in different places, and then sometimes kind of jumbled up all together in the transition zones.

1

And so would you call this then because another term I've heard is Savannah, so there's a herd of woodland and oak savanna. And so what's kind of the difference there?

2

So the savanna is really a designation of an oak woodland that has very few very sparse trees, I think it's up to 30% Canopy coverage. So where we're at right now we're next to a creek, there's a lot of trees and a lot of other vegetation going on. And I would say close to the creek, there's, you know, 80 or 90% Canopy coverage. This is a riparian forest that we're sitting in. But if you go to other parts of Folsom, especially where you get more blue oaks, you'll see that there's a big oak and then a large grassland area, and then another oak and then we're grassland and that's the savanna. Okay, with oak woodland.

1

And can those areas not sustain as many oak trees as it is? They're not like enough water or?

2

Yeah, it's kind of complex. A lot of it has to do with soils. Yeah. Okay, moisture availability,

1

and the blue oaks grow it a little bit of an elevation. Is that right? Or are they can they be on the valley bottom, too,

2

there are some if you look at maps of where oaks are in California, you'll notice there's just basically a big gap in the central valley that there's no oaks here. And that's clearly not true. So it's been here much longer than Yeah, I'd say at least three or 400 years. So clearly, there's oaks here. There's also very, very large blue oaks here in Sacramento, very low on the valley floor. Okay. So, you know, there's actually a pretty substantial oak Blue Oak Grove close to Discovery Park, and then the neighborhood just a little bit east of there. So blue oaks and valley oaks are interesting, and they're not always exactly where you expect them to be.

Yeah, and I wonder if they got there themselves, or if people hope

2

to move them? Only you could ask, it's quite possible. I mean, both are very good food trees. Both blokes and valley oaks have quite delicious flavor in their acorns. So I'm absolutely certain that wise people move them about in the valley quite a bit.

1

Let's grow some of these over here. Yeah, I once for the California supported more native people than anywhere else in what is now The United States before European contact because of the oak trees and the amount of oak trees that were here, but I was looking for that quote and I could not find it anywhere. Anyone knows where that is, please send it to me. Anyways, what I did find is some really great information about how California's native people would tend to oak woodlands and this is from Kate Marion childs secrets of the oak woodlands which is a fantastic book and I highly recommend it so she says California Native people shaped and manage the lands for 1000s of years selectively harvesting plants and carefully burning pruning sowing, tilling, weeding and transplanting by burning the understory and grasslands every few years, many tribes protected their homelands from catastrophic fires while reducing populations of acorn pests, improving germination of seeds and opening vistas that afforded better hunting and easier access to plants. So there's this very cool circle of people taking care of oak trees and oak trees, taking care of people that I would really love to see us get back to a little bit more. And you talked a little bit about this too, how oaks support more species. And my question was going to be kind of wire oaks important and I think that speaks to that. But like, what are maybe some of the species that come to your mind that are really reliant on oak trees?

2

Oh, man. Well, I mean it look at any ecosystem in which oak trees are part of it. And you'll see them as as basically the baseline for pretty much everything.

1

I've actually even heard them referred to as Keystone plants,

2

it's kind of hard to overestimate pretty much any insect that is important within within that ecosystem has relationship with the oak tree, they either live on it, or they eat it, or they overwinter on it or Yeah, it's and it's really it really comes back to the insects and I've seen some really fascinating, actually, there's been research here in Sacramento, I should point that out was done by a colleague of mine, his name's Dan Rolla and he lives in Curtis Park, and he decided he's he's a bird guy. So he decided to do some bird studies on his own neighborhood. And he found that adding oak trees to the urban forest increase the bird diversity by quite a substantial amount.

1

So as Sarah said, Dan arola has done some really cool work with bird diversity in urban forests. And one of his findings is that urban forest with oak supported eight bird species that were absent from urban forest without oak and supported substantially higher abundances of eight other species. So eight were there that were not even present in other oak lists, urban forest and then an additional eight that were present in the other forest, the without the Oaks there were just way more of them in the Oak areas. Another one of his studies showed that migrant birds just spent way more time foraging in oak trees than anywhere else, even though oak trees weren't as much of the canopy. So they spent 74% of their time foraging and oak trees, even though oaks were only 15% of that urban forest canopy. And all of this just goes to show how important oaks are to have even in our urban settings.

2

They just, you know, we all need these things to survive. So that's why the oaks are important is because they they're the baseline for everything, mostly because they support all of these insects. And people are like, Oh, no, we don't want to encourage more insects. Have you ever seen a parasitoid wasp? No, they're so

tiny but a lot of time around oak trees ever seen

2

we don't even see them. So it's not like the gnarly these terrible, you know, I don't want fleas and mosquitoes in my yard either. Like it's not those sorts of insects. It's the caterpillars all the walls and the butterflies and well, maybe

1

you're even attracting predators for the ones you don't want. Yeah, maybe you're attracting at what about arachnids? What about? Does spiders company these guys up? I'm sure they do. Yeah, yeah. Or you know, the birds you were talking about? Maybe come and eat the the insects that you don't want around your garden, too.

2

Yeah, most of the studies have definitely been tied to things like birds and butterflies that people see and appreciate you no more. I actually haven't seen an arachnid an oak study. But that would be fascinating. That's really

1

interesting. So what types of oak trees you mentioned that there were around 20 species that are native to California? What are kind of maybe the top three or so that are really recognizable, that you can point out? Maybe the people can kind of start looking for those ones as they're, as they're out and about?

2

Yeah, it's it's really regional. Right? So it really depends on where you live. So if you're in Southern California, in Pasadena, they have the Engelmann oak, which is almost extinct because Pasadena was built into this, you know, and other parts of you know, that enormous city were built into this woodland. So is that endemic to that? Yes, yeah, absolutely. Go to the Channel Islands. There's, I think two or three oak species that are only on the Channel Islands. Here in the Valley. It's really the Valley oak is the most notable and then kind of around the edges of the valley. The blue oak woodlands are kind of the classic. You see cows grazing in a beautiful lush green area with oak trees. That's quite often blue oak woodlands. Let's see If you go out on the coast range Coast Live Oak is incredibly important and very common oak for much of the California coastline. And as you go up towards the north part of the state, mostly coastal, you get carcass Karianna I'm blanking on its common name right now.

1

I looked it up and that is the Oregon white oak. Yeah, so

2

it kind of depends on where you are in the state. And then there's also a couple places where there's really interesting oaks that you don't necessarily see other places like there's there's a an oak on map Tamil pious that is supposedly its own thing, although there's now I've heard it's actually a hybrid of three other oaks. And yeah, so there's there's oaks all over there's a lot that are a little short shrubs. So if everybody says Oh, it's a scrub oak scrub oak can mean you can refer to like seven or eight of the oak species in California is a scrub oak. It's, it's you know, shrub sized, Evergreen kind of pointy leaves oak tree. But depending on where you are in the state that could be almost it could be one of seven different kinds of oak trees,

1

right and could even be like a young live oak that people are mistaking for

2

could be there. The young live oaks are funny because they just they don't look like trees, they look terrible. They have these, they look like this spiny wild octopus.

1

We all go through an awkward phase. Okay, you know, they go through a bad one maybe?

2

Well, and that's part of the reason that people don't like to plant them in urban spaces is because they're when they're young, they look crazy, and they're really hard to manage. And they're different. You can't really prune them all and a lot of people that like a tidy urban space, it's just not an easy tree to love in your landscape until it gets bigger and then they get really nice. I like them because they're really good climbing trees. Like if you're trying to plant a tree for kids to climb on, you know picking either interior Live Oak here or on a coast Live Oak on the coast, like those are excellent climbing trees. So I'd like to see those in more like school yards and actually allow the kids to claim them.

Yeah, I love that. I got to claim a lot of coastline books when I was a kid. I loved it really good for that

1

my favorite. And then I started going to places with more manicured trees. And I was like, why are the branches so high? I can't reach that. Yeah, so sad about it. Yeah. How many you mentioned a few Do you know off the top of your head? How many endemic species have Oakland, California?

2

That's tough because there's a lot of them like we'll bounce into Oregon a little bit. I don't know off the top of my head. But a handful. There's a handful of there definitely are you know, Blue Oak for sure. Is a California endemic Valley oak. I think it actually is to really your range is not Yeah, the range is not that large. Like I said the Engelmann oak in Southern California. Yeah, there's a lot.

Yeah, that's really cool. Do you have a favorite?

2

It kind of depends on where I'm at. You know, when I'm working in this part of Sacramento and you see these magnificent Valley oaks are definitely my favorite. When I'm out on the coast. I love the coastline books. Yeah, I love the canyon Live Oak Creek is because Lepus is a really gorgeous tree. It has really fun acorn caps. They're all big and golden. It's also called the golden cup oak. Yeah, it kind of depends on where I'm at.

1

So we talked a little about animals that rely on oak trees and invertebrates. What about plants? Do you know of any plants that rely on oak trees,

2

so I haven't seen a whole lot of studies on there being direct relationships but you know, oaks are engineers or their ecosystem, right, they drop a lot of leaves, they build soil. So there are a lot of plants that you will most frequently find close by and associated to them, especially in harsher landscapes because they added more shade and they felt more soil and there's some talk about how they move water through the soil to if they can draw up more water from deeper they'll often release it and let their roots that are closer to the surface I mean 90% of a tree's roots are within the top three feet of the soil we have this idea that they send these huge crazy roots down and in some oak species can have a tap root but usually not their whole life and not all of them and all the time. So by by all of those processes of them living they definitely create a little haven for more things to grow. And I mean you can notice this even here like where's the tallest grass right now in early spring? It's under where the oak trees are. And that's because there's more nutrients and more soil in those spaces. So yeah, I mean yeah, I guess you could say that the oak mistletoe does rely mostly growing oak trees not completely there's a little bit on that one.

1

And I think like I think a lot of people think of the oak mistletoe is just being like a parasite, right? Is it is it hurting the tree? Is it helping?

2

It's definitely a parasite. And it depends on how much there is on how how much is hurting the tree. I have very mixed feelings about it because it's a super important food source for animals in the winter. It has berries in different times. Yeah, but mistletoe is definitely a parasite. It is definitely sucking its you know what it needs from the tree and not really giving anything back? Yeah, and you won't you don't see a lot of it here there's some oak forests will you'll see a quite a bit of oak mistletoe

1

one of the things I've read about oak mistletoe is that like Sarah said, it really is only hurting the trees if there's a lot of it in a tree or if it's a really dry year. is the other one so if there's extreme drought then oak mistletoe can stress the trees but also zero points out. It's a really important food source to a lot of creatures. It is poisonous to humans. So watch out for that. But something that is not poisonous to humans. Let's learn about eating acorns. Okay, have you eaten acorns? Oh, yeah. Yeah, a lot all the time. Do you process them yourself?

2

Sometimes I'm pretty lazy. Like I quite frequently Sacramento will just go to keep the market and buy it

at market. Okay, this

2

is yeah, it's a good tip. I need to go over there. There's a lot of ethnic groups that have acorns as part of their diet. And luckily, Sacramento being a really diverse place with a lot of people from a lot of parts of the world, you can definitely find occurrence here. It's pretty common in Korean cooking to not adventure other.

1

Yeah. Wow. That's interesting. And do you have any favorite recipes? Oh, like, with acorns, so

2

But I mostly just like make cookies. I mean, it's it's a nice nutty flour, like anything that you would put almond flour and to add, you know, really quality nutrition to you can use a corn flour for.

1

So you can substitute it for other kind of nut flowers in general. And it just how does it taste? Is it kind of nutty?

2

Instinct? Yeah, it's definitely a little nutty. Or I would I don't know I'm not a super fruity. And that's a very untraditional way to eat it. There are plenty of people who are continuing to eat acorns as a traditional food and a variety of ways. Yeah. And in Sacramento, if if things ever get better, they used to do acorn day at the state Indian Museum and set her for it in which some of our local native practitioners will come show local traditional methods of gathering and preparing food. And actually, you can cook it up so you can eat it, which is really awesome.

1

I just checked the state Indian museums website, and they don't currently have any events scheduled. But it might be worth checking again, when it gets a little closer to the fall and closer to a corn season. Because you can't just pick up an acorn and eat it right. Like and

2

you wouldn't you wouldn't do it. It wouldn't taste good. It would taste that hurt. You know, I mean, no, you wouldn't be able to consume enough that would really hurt you, but it would taste very bitter and unpleasant.

1

So what's the process like to make them? Tasty? Yeah,

2

well, and different types of acorns have different flavors. I love to ask people who eat them frequently what their favorite species is. So the easiest way is to gather them and dry them. You want to make sure you don't get lots of insects in there, you'll get rotten gross. It'll be very unpleasant for you. So you, yeah, and buggy acorns. And I honestly will like I usually gather them get good ones, and I'll throw them in a bucket in my garage. I know, at least for a year, so they get all the way dry. And then you give a kid a hammer, I highly recommend safety goggles. And you know, it's better if they don't fully smash it. And you can just crack it and open it. It's

1

enjoyable for everyone. It's love to smash things with a hammer. That's perfect.

2

Yeah, there's some that you can get away with soaking just as a whole nut and then drying again and turning it into flour. Some people like to smash them up and then then leach it. But you definitely need to get the tannins out to make it more palatable. I want her to tell me, okay, so you, you need to soak it at least for some period of time. There's a lot of ways to do this. You can do it in a jar in your fridge. You can just you know, pour water through it multiple times. out of options. I've heard of the toilet tank method. Oh my gosh, I tried one time, but it definitely like kind of makes a mess. So put it in the upper tank really good. Clean water is Yeah, I know a lot of people put chemicals in your toilet. So I don't know if that's always a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. I've never tried, you know, in a stream. But that would work. Right. Flowing water flowing water. Yeah.

1

Wow. That's amazing. And then this is a little bit more of a depressing question. What are what are some threats? What's threatening? Right now in California?

2

Well, right now it's drought. And people, I would say the big two, there's also not, it's been recognized for at least 30 years, there's in most places not enough natural regrowth of baby oak trees to replace the ones that we're losing. And we've already lost a huge amount I mean, if you if you moved here if you were fewer someone coming to California to search for gold and you know just wreaking havoc as you came like that this tree here would provide me enough good firewood for what whole year two years. So let's just chop that one right down. You know, the first steam engines, they apparently cut down tons and tons of oak to feed the steam engines because they had to keep those fires going. So yeah, we've lost a lot a lot a lot of oak trees and people are a big culprit like even this beautiful big tree here that is in a park and basically not hurting anybody. You know, it would be probably best to just fence it off so people can enjoy looking at it, rather than at some point deciding it needs to be cut down. Some cities are better at this than others Visalia if you're ever in Visalia, go check out the Oaks in the park. They've been allowing them to just act like oak trees and fall apart and keep them as safe as possible. Yeah, and they have some very funky that's very controversial with a lot of people like in traditional arborists is quite reasonably terrified by that, because structurally, they're not as sturdy as they could be anymore. But yeah, so I think the best thing that people could do is to understand that to try not to cut them down for bad reasons, like, let's just start there. Let's try not to cut down any more trees. Let's try not to cut down lots of oak trees and put in a winery like it's just not, let's not do that. And then make sure that there's some sort of replacement going on.

1

As someone who grew up in a county with more than 400 wineries, let me just say there are enough wineries. Although to be fair, there are some wineries out there that do not cut down existing trees and do things like creating green corridors to allow wildlife to access water in forest land and doing things to revive riparian areas, streams and wetlands. This is according to California winery. advisory.com. I suspect that an approach like this takes a lot more time and energy and money. And I don't know enough about agriculture to speak to the complexities of that it'd be really cool if we could support farmers of all kinds to move in that direction. Okay. But for those of us who aren't in agriculture, what can we do? There's a

2

lot of folks that are actually great for that you could grow on your property, maybe not a Valley oak, like this massive, you might, you know, you should probably plan ahead. It's bigger than my house, I think. Yeah, it's a massive, I mean, you can't you could potentially, there's also a, you know, a time thing, it's not going to get this massive for three or 400 years. So right, right, you could probably make an assumption of whether that's reasonable or not, but there's a lot of smaller sized native species that do quite fine in a more natural landscape. And if we do want to retain biodiversity and actually commit to urban biodiversity, I've heard that you should have 60% native plants in your yard. And maybe you can't have a native tree because you don't have space. So but you know, everything else, you could quite easily do that. What size

1

yard do you think would be required to get maybe what's like the smallest native oak? Because I have a tiny yard? I don't think that I could grow one, which makes me really sad. But

2

oh, there's some, I mean, some of the shrubs sized ones make actually, if you can, the problem is is that they're not really grown in the nursery business. Because they're, there's a very niche market and the nursery business is hard. They have to grow things that people are going to buy and people walk in are like, look at the 20 foot tall Redwood in a pot, I'm going to take that home, right, but some of the smaller shrubby oaks, like locally I've been giving people like cork is February to folia, which is one of the scrub oaks it stays under about 10 feet and it's very shrubby. Like if I wanted to block your window, it's kind of spiny so it might keep people out of your cider dough. And lots of wildlife depends on their oaks. So yeah, that's

1

really cool. I thought I thought that there was an oak oak list future for me, but maybe that's I

2

need to find one of the shrubby ones. I know, I just started some Quercus durata, which is another like scrub oak from more central California. And it grows mostly on serpentine soils, that also could be a really fun, smaller landscape oak, like this big hole.

1

Right, right. So if you're hearing this, and you want to plant an oak tree, but you're not sure what kind because there are so many here in California, a really good place to start is Cal scape.org, which is a garden planning site all about native plants. And so you can type in your zip code, find out what native plants are local to your area, and then find out how big they get and what their water needs are and all kinds of great information about them. So definitely check that out. How much room do you think you'd need to grow a Valley oak that would and let it mature there with? Well,

2

that's, you know, it's one of those arguments about like, what's important, like my house and Davis I definitely I have two Valley oaks in my front yard. And there's a third one across, we're on like a funny corner. And you know, they're gonna get pretty big, but I decided that it was reasonable. And somebody's got to plan so Valley oaks in the city. Yeah, so if

1

you're wanting to do that, do you think it's just like, I'm just gonna be I'm gonna have an arborist on speed dial, like to kind of keep the tree healthy. Get rid of the branches before they fall, cut them off. Like those kinds of things.

2

You can definitely manage them. Yeah, if you're willing to commit to managing it in urban space. You can I mean, I have a pretty large like, corner lot yard with a lot of space. But it's also it's a gamble, right? Like, okay, at 200 years that trees probably going to need to come out. And right now it's only 12 years

old. Right. So we got a long time with that tree.

2

Yeah. And the city arborist will, you know, are you with me? Yeah, till they're blue in their face. And that's totally fine. We can disagree on that.

1

Yeah. What do you wish people knew about oaks? Oh,

2

I wish that people could see their role in a more natural landscape and see how they pretty much support everything in the places where they're the main tree species because it's very easy for us to not recognize that and just be like, Oh, it'll be fine. If we just don't have these anymore. We'll just plant some other tree and but that's actually not true. That's gonna change everything. I also wish people thought more about roots because it's you can't see them right there. They're not there, you can't see them, they're not immediately present. But if you damage the roots, you're going to kill your tree. I think one of the best examples of this in the last 10 years or so, in Elk Grove, the city needed to build wider roads to accommodate the traffic for the people living there. And there is a big beautiful tree that they're like, Okay, well, we're gonna avoid it, we're gonna make the road be kind of weird to go around the tree. But it really did not cause so much damage that within five years, the tree died anyway. And that was totally foreseeable. Yeah. So like, part of me is like, you know, you could have just been like, we're just gonna do it and cut down the tree. And then let's make sure that we preserve other trees, or, you know, I wish that we were a little bit more clear on that decision making we do have more protections here than most places. But we really should, you know, I don't know, I don't think it ever makes sense to cut down a 300 year old tree to make a road wider. That's just what you're losing is, is you're losing something that is taken 100 years to grow. And there's all these animals and things that depend on and probably know that tree, and you're just like, Oh, whatever. We're Yeah, I need to go by here faster. Yeah, it's our human perspective does not align very well with theirs. And that's why we're destroying them. Yeah.

1

And like you said, people probably think that the roots go down and not out. And so they fail to realize that they are damaging the roots. So if I were to be able to get an extra vision, my extra goggles on, what would I see? What would the roots look like under that tree?

2

Yeah, so this tree is what let's say it's like 70 feet wide. Huge. Yeah. So all the way under where the branches are. There is a really thick conglomeration of roots, and How deep are those? So they're the top, you know, three feet of soil is totally full of them. And then there's larger routes. And I would say, there's some that are all the way in the creek, at least three times. Why? Yeah, there's some probably going under the bike path. Oh, my God over here. So it's, it's massive. It's, you know, two to three times as wide as this industry is huge. Yeah. And that's where we get in trouble with these big trees, because we're like, Oh, I'm not that close. I'm not going to hurt it. Gotcha. Yeah. So yeah. And you can damage a certain percentage of the roots every year and probably not hurt it too much. But you know, if you put in a little box and you chop everything to, you know, just the size of the tree really drastically limited? Well, yeah.

1

And the one that is probably going all the way over to the creek is probably vital to the trees help to be able to get consistent water.

2

Yeah. Oh, look at squirrel. Wildlife. It's been a little quiet up in that canopy since

1

I saw bird emitted. It was It went by too fast. So I didn't see. It was a bird up there. Okay. And then my last question is, what about the work that you do? Or oak trees or oak woodlands? What about it just still takes your breath away?

2

That's a tough question. Well, I mean, today was fun, because I don't come here and look at these trees, because we cared for them only for a few years. So to show up to a space and see it completely transformed. In the fact there's actually a lot more birds and there's a bunch of people enjoying the space, I think that's the thing is, is being able to think more on the timescale of a tree. And you know, when you look at something, and it's you're planting an acorn, and it's tiny, you know, the possibility for that tree to then be this one in a couple of 100 years. That's pretty cool. That is really cool. It's a nice gift.

And it's cool to be able to see it along

2

the way. If you can get partway right. Absolutely, for sure. All right. Thank

1

you so much, Sarah. I really appreciate it. No problem. Did you find new reasons to love oak trees? I hope so. Okay, one last thing about oak trees. During the interview, I completely forgot to ask Sarah how oak trees spread with those super heavy seeds. And so I emailed them and they delivered with this answer. Oak trees have a very, very slow migration rate due to those big heavy seeds, which is a big part of why they're struggling with climate change and urbanization Jays scrub jays in our region are excellent oak planters and are tied to Oak Forest and regeneration where they coexist worldwide. Other creatures can also assist with moving acorns such as ground squirrels, but Jays and in the past humans move them further this fastest, I think most life histories of the oak discount the impact native Californians had on their past and current distribution and success. Acknowledging this and including indigenous people in restoration and landscape stewardship is imperative for non wildlife assisted seed dispersal. Most acorns that sprout natural oak regeneration occurs directly under and adjacent to the canopy of mature oak trees. This means that we need to actively reforest areas without trees if we hope to increase oak canopy cover or oak habitat of which Sacramento has lost 90 plus percent over the last 200 years. They aren't going to move very far or very fast or be able to overcome our urban development to persist without help. So we got to help the oak trees and the other thing that they said is that Douglas Tallamy, in addition to the nature of oaks also has another book bringing nature home, which he's actually better known for and it's all about how we can improve biodiversity by planting native plants in our yards and Zarah says he encourages landscaping with native plants and to not undervalue. microhabitats in urban spaces. So, such fantastic information. Thank you, Sarah. One side note on this is that all of this love for oaks does not diminish my love for other native plants. We need a wide variety of native plants because there are many species of insects that specialize and will only lay eggs on or eat one plant. So think monarch butterflies and milkweed. It's just that oaks are the most impactful so they're a great place to start with native plants, especially since you can choose a small one or several small ones since they're wind pollinated. Okay, this episode is getting really long. So I'll try to wrap it up. I just want to make sure to send out some love and some thank yous before I go. So first, the Sacramento tree Foundation. Thank you so much for letting me take zero away from you on what was actually her very last day with sack tree she's relocating and so she had to move on from her position there. And thank you also for just being so genuinely supportive and encouraging when you heard about this podcast and heard what I was doing and for just backing me up you guys rock I wanted to send out also a little notice to everybody that the big day of giving is coming up and Secretary would be so happy to have donations from you so that they can continue doing the truly amazing and impactful work that they are doing. So think about them on May 5 and running up to May 5. You can follow them on social media to find out more about that they are at SEC tree on Instagram, and their website is sec tree.org. I also wanted to say thank you again to all of my patrons and to everyone who has left me a review in the past couple of weeks. You can find me on Instagram at Golden State naturalist and my website is www dot Golden State naturalist.com And you can look at that if you want to see a dorky picture of me popping out of some fennel with binoculars. So definitely check that out. An interesting thing from my week is that I pulled out my old laptop that I got in 2005 and you guys it still works and I found some old poetry on that laptop that I wrote as a very angsty 20 year old so that was fun and also surprisingly emotional. Thanks for sticking around until the very end of the episode. I hope you're as excited about oak trees as I am. Until next time, stay curious bye

1

the song you just heard is called I don't know buy grapes and you can find a link to that song as well as to the Creative Commons license in the show notes, though. Bye