Old growth Tan Oak trees are a rarity in northern California. The first white settlers cut them all down for the tan bark industry, the bark was used for tanning leather. Today most people around here disrespect tan oak, and call them trash trees. They've only ever seen young ones. Tan oak keep trying, they'd like to see some of their people grow old, but people cut them down while they are teenagers.
Tan oak acorns were the preferred, prized acorn of local tribes.
Awhile back phytopthera, (also known as sudden oak death) began killing tan oaks in CA, like a fast moving plague. It spread on my neighbors land, and I was afraid it would cross the road and wipe out my ridge of old growth tan oak. I consulted Dennis Martinez ( restoration forester, and fire ecologist extrordinaire) who suggested as an experiment, I might want to try smudging the trees with smoke. One study indicated that smoke weakens and kills plant pathogens within minutes, and has beneficial effects. (Parmeter and Uhrenholdt 1974)
Dennis suggested smudging in the wet season when phytopthera sets spores.
I did a light understory thinning, and used the green material to make small very smokey burn piles. Tan oak are rather sensitive, they don't like fire too near, so i kept flames well away from trunks and branches. When the piles turned to coals , I raked them around individual trees mimicking a low intensity burn. (Back then almost no one was doing prescribed burns.)
20 yrs later my ridge of old growth tan oak still stands. (Unfortunately most of my neighbors tan oak died.)
Sudden oak death, slowed down, but perhaps because of the recent drought we're seeing it pop up again. I think I may do some tree smudging this winter.
#TanOak
#OldGrowth
#phytopthera
#SuddenOakDeath
#acorns
#FireEcology
#smudging