White Oak Flat

 

White Oak Flat
By Msact at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0,
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27178443

We had a home place in Arkansas many years ago which had a section in the woods called "white oak flat". All the white oak, Quercus alba, had been harvested and none were left standing but an old gnarled tree. I can only imagine what the forests in Arkansas were like before massive logging of old growth trees. Then the loggers, running out of old growth in Arkansas, moved on to California and old growth trees were indiscriminately cut down there too. A post on social media reminded me of that. A person was looking for only white oak firewood. My mind's eye sees many more trees being cut down here in Georgia just for firewood.

I am just reading about white oak trees and apparently it doesn't even produce a large crop of acorns until it is 50 years old. I notice the oak trees are always the last to lose their leaves in the Autumn and the last to leaf out in the Spring. Oak trees are fairly reliable telling me when to expect Winter around the corner and also they tell me when I should plant my vegetable crops in Spring.

We have one huge white oak tree here which towers above all the other trees I've been up on that bank and I've never seen an acorn under the tree. If there were any they've probably all been eaten by the squirrels by this time of year. That tree sits high on a bank and leans. I've worried about it, but today I decided I'm not going to cut it down even if it has the potential of falling on my poor soul. Besides taking out trees of that size takes a ton of money we don't have to spend. What's a tree worth? It's worth everything to me.