House of Oak 4/5/07

On the Making of Oak trees (c) by Kirk Jordan


Today's send features three different species of Oak, which - on quick inspection, appear to be so very different from one another as to belong to very different tree families.

Trees in the Oak family tend to have certain shared qualities: floral Catkins (the wormy flower things), hard yellow-tan wood, dense bulky form (with notable exceptions), acorns, tough grey-brown bark etc. -- but they manifest an extremely wide variation in leaf shapes.

Pic one is of a willow oak, with thin willowy leaves.

Pics two and tree showcase emerging Scarlet-Oak, or possibly Pin-Oak leaves,

while

Pics four and five feature the still tender leaves of a scrubby Post Oak (or Possibly a Bur Oak)


--

For More on Oak IDs see:

http://www.cas.vanderbilt.edu/bioimages/pages/compare-oaks.htm

or for more on the forest in general:

http://forestry.about.com/cs/treeid/a/hard_tree_id.htm




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