wordless Wednesday

coast live oak ~ 02/22/14 ~ Fort Ord

coast live oak / California live oak

Quercus agrifolia var. agrifolia

Fagaceae

I don't know why I keep getting tripped up on coast live oaks, as is evidenced by my past posts March 20, 2011 and March 11, 2012.  In the comments section, Cindy @ Dipper Ranch has provided quick tips on oaks, but my mental block around trees keeps me from remembering most of it.  I now know to look for "underarm hair" on the underside of leaves.  It seems to me that our CA native oaks have a greater degree of variation within spp. than between spp.  Every time I think I've found a different sp. of evergreen oak, it ends up being a coast live oak.  Ugh.  These two sets of photos are two trees growing about 20 feet apart.

Quercus agrifolia var. agrifolia?

Underarm hair?  Check.  But, look how smooth the trunk is, akin to how smooth the leaves are with very few points on the leaf margin.  I know the number of points can be variable, but the trunk, too?  Can anyone confirm for me that this is coast live oak?  Cindy?

For my future reference, and maybe yours, too:
California Oak Identification @ University of California Hastings Reserve
California Native Oaks @ Las Pilitas Nursery 
Oak Identification @ University of California Cooperative Extension, Marin County

coast live oak ~ 12/07/13 ~ Fort Ord

coast live oak / California live oak

Quercus agrifolia var. agrifolia

Fagaceae

As we were driving out to the Creekside entrance on Hwy 68, I noticed most of the oaks had dead tips.  Speeding past, it looked like a deep green mosaic with scattered bits of tan.  I don't think this is sudden oak death, which is caused by a fungus-like pathogen.  I'm guessing it's caused by true fungal diseases, some of which apparently show themselves more when the oaks are drought-stressed, like this year.  I'm not quite sure how that works since fungi generally like moisture.  Right?  This looks very different from the swaths of entirely dead trees I saw last year at Toro Park, which is located right across the street of Hwy 68.  The U.S. Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station has an excellent technical report "A Field Guide to Insects and Diseases of California Oaks".  Maybe it's Diplodia quercina branch canker (pp. 88-89) or Cryptocline cinerescens twig blight (pp. 76-79)?  I really don't know.  I'm no tree doctor.  Half the time I can't even distinguish coast live oak from other Quercus spp.  In any case, this widespread dieback is interesting to note.

ps 03/12/14 - An intern from a local paper The Californian contacted me regarding this post.  She wants to use my pictures and information in an article she's writing.  This is the first time I've ever been contacted by a newspaper for Nature ID, so it was an interesting experience... I think for the both of us.  She was sweet but sounded a little nervous.  I gave my photos free of charge, because I didn't want the hassle of creating an invoice and dinging for payment (so many places conveniently "forget" to actually pay).  I'll link to the article once it comes out.  Cool beans.

wedding tree ~ 11/17/13 ~ Garland Ranch

wedding tree
California white oak / valley oak
Quercus lobata
Fagaceae

I love that we have a wedding tree.  And, yes, we do occasionally visit even if it's not our anniversary.  Analogies could be made comparing our marriage to the continuous changes in and around this tree.  With the relatively recent trail closure, I'm having to adjust to taking a different route to reach the tree.  I was resistant at first.  I noticed a new trail has popped up, and maybe next time we'll explore that path.  The leaves were still hanging on.  They were a bit crispy compared to the soft shoots of spring.  I'm not sure when they drop.  January?

ps 11/28/13 - I came across "That Tree: A Year in the Life of a Lonely Oak" on the Sierra Club site, and it reminded me a little of what I'm doing with our wedding tree.  So far, my less-than-artistic photos document 7 1/2 years of this oak tree, and I hope to continue chronicling at least once annually for the rest of our lives.

wedding tree ~ 04/07/13 ~ Garland Ranch

 wedding tree
California white oak / valley oak
Quercus lobata
Fagaceae

Hey yo, long time, no?  Has it really been almost 4 months since I last posted to Nature ID?  It's interesting how time seems to become more condensed as I get older.  No offense to anyone but I have a theory as to why elderly folk drive so slow, if an hour feels like half an hour, then going 30 miles per hour feels more like 60 miles per hour.  Whoa.  Time and the unspoken commitments we all make to each other have been looming large in my brain space lately.  I had meant for Nature ID to chronicle nature.  Now I realize it's helped me chronicle the seasons of my life... and I miss the act of recording.  Anniversary.  We did our annual hike a day early with concerns over having enough daylight after school and the possibility that I might be traveling. Imagine our surprise when we found our wedding tree trail closed for rehabilitation.  Fortunately other trails to the tree remain open for now.

CA oak moth ~ 09/23/12 ~ Toro Park

California oak moth caterpillar / California oakworm on coast live oak or interior live oak
Phryganidia californica on Quercus agrifolia var. agrifolia or Quercus wislizeni
Fagaceae

Coming down through Wildcat Canyon, I found great swaths of dead-looking oaks, yellowish brown and upon closer inspection severely munched upon by oak moth caterpillars.  I don't think the folks who named the canyon had this kind of wild cat in mind.

Sounds of drops like gentle rain and tinkly crunchy chomping surrounded me.  The smell in this area was distinctive, too, but I can't easily describe it.  The trail and nearby ground were completely coated in greenish tan pellets.  Frass.  Caterpillar poop. And lots of it! The most I've ever seen... which really doesn't mean much considering I don't follow the fluctuating annual cycles of oak moth populations all that closely.  I believe there are people who use frass mass to estimate population densities, so my assertion isn't totally out of the blue.  This past spring, I did casually notice oak moths were on the wing in full force unusually early on with a second generation flying in June or July.  Unfortunately, I didn't take notes of the timing and my recollection isn't specific, only that it was significant enough that I commented to a couple of Monterey City forestry fellows at the local farmers' market how I predicted this was going to be a booming oak moth year.  They laughed me off and politely disagreed.

The few green leaves I found here had become veritable buffet lines for caterpillars. What surprised me was finding so many feeding on dead leaves. Their mandibles have got to be industrial strength to masticate crispy dried evergreen oak leaves.  There were plenty of dead caterpillars that simply looked dessicated, but there were also numerous dead caterpillars hanging by their first prolegs, a sure sign of a viral and/or bacterial infection.  Interestingly, I did not find a single chrysalis (yes, I use this term for moth pupa in addition to butterfly pupa, if it's not covered in hairs or silk and hangs by a stalk).  I wonder if this 3rd seasonal generation will successfully pupate and emerge in the next few weeks, or if this is an early sign of a natural population crash.

Even when everything else is dried up, live oaks usually remain green all year round.  I doubt the caterpillars were directly responsible for the dried oaks, because I suspect their heavy feeding did not actually kill the trees.  Our unusually mild winter with very little rain was gentle on last year's overwintering early instar caterpillars and also water stressed the oaks.  However, there were numerous other oaks in the park that were still green and with significant numbers of oak moth caterpillars.  There is a part of me that wonders if this area, easily accessible to group picnickers, had been hit by Sudden Oak Death or an Armillaria oak root rot fungi.  I will be curious to find out if these oaks have a fresh flush of green leaves after the rains hit.

I blogged about CA oak moths once before, which is an unexpectedly popular post.  I've linked to the UC IPM Online site for CA oakworms in the scientific name ID above, and I don't recall why I didn't include it in my previous oak moth post since it's chock full of great information. Also, while doing another oak moth search, I found this fellow blogger Garden Wise Guy's post to be quite entertaining.

ps 09/26/12 - Thanks to Cindy at Dipper Ranch who commented and always gets me thinking about things.  I have such a difficult time IDing trees, let alone the confusing complex of oaks. I've edited the post above to include the possibility that the oaks I saw were interior live oaks and the possibility the browned leaves were due to an oak root rot fungi.  I'll see what I can do about contacting the proper agencies to check into this, because SOD is closely monitored.

tanbark oak ~ 07/18/12 ~ Mt. Madonna

tanbark oak
Notholithocarpus densiflorus
Fagaceae

posted 08/03/12 - When we last camped at Mt. Madonna in December 2010 I noticed great swaths of tanbark oaks had been recently chopped down. At the time I wasn't positive about the ID of this tree, nor did I hazard a guess as to why so many of these trees had been cut. Thanks to Randy at Way Points I learned more about Sudden Oak Death, which can affect tanbark oaks and Quercus spp. I suspected the clearing had to do with this disease, but I was wrong. As I looked into Santa Clara County Parks for this blog post, I discovered their best management practices included monitoring for pathogens such as Armillaria oak root rot fungi and others. What? It never occurred to me that mushrooms could kill trees. Clustered fruits, such as honey mushrooms (Armillaria mellea), may indicate the presence of deadly diseases. I now wonder about the ID of the possible sulfur tufts I found. Hmm, always learning something new.

wedding tree ~ 04/08/12 ~ Garland Ranch

wedding tree
California white oak / valley oak
Quercus lobata
Fagaceae

How often will our wedding anniversary land on Easter? While extending our regrets for leaving the Highlands shin-dig early, a sentimental fellow best known as "Boo" suggested we take Easter egg offerings for our wedding tree. That's exactly what we did! Once the kids' egg and adults' beer hunts were finished, we found cracked eggs we liked and wrapped them up for our hike up to the mesa. It was great fun selecting our own hiding spots on our tree. Notice the ant on mine? Many ants came to check it out. Andy hid his high in a nook. The vernal greenery on this deciduous oak was notably varied this year with clusters of tight buds to soft unfurled leaves. Click to see this tree on April 8 in 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.

ps 04/12/12 - I looked for fairy fingers and could not find them.

oak ~ 03/11/12 ~ Pogonip

unidentified oak
Quercus sp.
Fagaceae

I need help (heh, probably in more ways than one) for this ID. Unfortunately, since this is a city park in Santa Cruz and it's beyond the range of my usual double-check option of our local CNPS Montery Chapter plant lists, I resorted to Calflora's What Grows Here. There are three species recorded for this area: coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia), Santa Cruz island oak/Shreve oak (Quercus parvula), and interior live oak (Quercus wislizeni). We have a coast live oak tree at the end of our driveway, and I feel I'm now very familiar with this tree; it has new fresh green spring growth but nothing like the pretty pink flower-like sprouts as shown above. If anyone can help ID this oak tree for me, I'd be very appreciative.

Monterey pine and coast live oak ~ 12/25/11 ~ Jacks Peak

Monterey pine
Pinus radiata
CNPS 8th Edition Inventory
Pinaceae

coast live oak
Quercus agrifolia var. agrifolia
Fagaceae

This post is for Cindy of Dipper Ranch based on her recent comment. I wish I had better pictures of how the ends look chewed. I noticed before at Jacks Peak that tips of Monterey Pine litter the trail. This is the first time I noticed tips of coast live oak also on the trail. To me they look like they've been chewed off, but I don't really know. We haven't had any wind storms lately, so I don't think that's the reason. It just seems a bit unusual to find tips of trees on the forest floor. Maybe a pruning-happy tree squirrel did this? Anyone have any ideas as to why this happens?

CA oak moth ~ 06/30/11 ~ Fort Ord

California oak moth on coast live oak
Phryganidia californica on Quercus agrifolia var. agrifolia
Fagaceae

The populations of the CA oak moth are known to fluctuate dramatically over the years in an apparent cycle. I tend to forget about them until I start seeing swarms of moths around oak trees on warm June or September/October afternoons. It's really quite an amazing sight. In places of heavy outbreaks, people who normally don't pay attention to such things definitely notice massive numbers of caterpillars swinging on lines of silk from defoliated oak trees and climbing everywhere to pupate, from tree trunks to buildings and cars. I've read the population cycle runs anywhere from 5 to 10 years. It seems to me this would be a difficult thing to monitor, particularly the relative numbers, length of time, and locations. What I recall is that one year it could be heavy out in Carmel Valley and three years later it could be heavy up in Aptos. I've even seen one oak completely defoliated and the oak right next to it not even touched. I wish I had taken notes and photos of my observations through the years.

Many people seem to get alarmed when their precious oak tree in their yard gets defoliated. They call out pest management companies to spray and inject pesticides. I think this is a waste of time and money. I also believe this is harmful to the tree, the fauna that depends on the tree, and surrounding wildlife, including birds that collect the acorns and other moths that don't even eat oaks. Some reputable companies will clearly state oak moth infestations generally only last 2 years at most and they will treat in the second year. Huh? Well, if you wait to the third year without doing anything, the moths mysteriously disappear anyways. Plus, the live oak usually recovers with vigorous new growth, which is not an annual thing for this evergreen oak. It's cost-free pruning with an added benefit of natural fertilizer from the frass. I've seen this first-hand in the oak trees next to our driveway; I actually think they look healthier now than a few years ago before defoliation from the oak moths.

I believe these regular population crashes are density dependent. My theory is that when you intervene in the natural cycle and artificially suppress the peak population size, you prolong the higher than average population numbers. Again just my theory, the reason for this is that parasitoids (tachinids and ichneumonids), viruses, fungi, other diseases, and predators that normally keep the oak moth population in check aren't allowed to do their job as effectively. You end up with a bedraggled oak (think how your hair looks without a hair cut for a long time) and the potential to prolong the stress of repeated partial defoliation, which could in the long-run do more harm to your oak tree.

Okay, I'll get off my soap box. For decent links with better information, check out Elkhorn Slough.org, University of California Hastings Reserve, Pests of Landscape Trees and Shrubs, and Tree Solutions (yes, a pest management company with well-written information).

ps 10/09/11 - The oak moths have started swirling around our oak tree en masse. Interesting to note, the tree itself does not look defoliated like I've seen other trees around town.

wedding tree ~ 04/08/11 ~ Garland Ranch

wedding tree
Fagaceae

It's amazing to me how 5 years goes by in the blink of an eye. For those new to my blog, this is the tree Andy and I married under, erm, before that huge branch broke off. We've made it a tradition to visit our tree on our anniversary. It's not always easy to schedule this hike, and Andy made extraordinary efforts this year so that he could be available. The day, like our marriage, started off warm and sunny, experienced a little stormy weather with snow during our hike, and ended sunny with a lovely dinner.

I guess I should mention that this is a California white oak (Quercus lobata). From a previous post before the leaves came out, Cindy from Dipper Ranch was correct in saying this tree is still alive. Thank you, Cindy.

ps 04/10/11 - Thank you, commenters, for your well wishes! Apologies again for those subscribed to comments for my deletion and extended reply. I figured people might want to read my answers to Cindy's questions. Also, I've found other blogs (not Dipper Ranch) sometimes delete posts or close their blogs altogether. Being a person who likes to keep records, I thought it best to "host" my recommendations.

coast live oak ~ 03/20/11 ~ Fort Ord

coast live oak with catkins
Quercus agrifolia var. agrifolia
Fagaceae

older coast live oak with lace lichen
Quercus agrifolia var. agrifolia with Ramalina menziesii
Fagaceae

posted 03/25/11 - This is the best ID you're going to get from me this morning. I wasn't feeling well during the night, which makes for an unpleasantly grumpy Katie. Add to the fact that I have difficulty identifying most trees.

I need help. Can anyone ID these and help me name the flower-ish parts? I think I have at least 2 different live oaks shown above... possibly. I can't imagine the first two pics are the same species as the last two pics. Either one is, at least I believe, coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia var. agrifolia). There are 7 species/subspecies of oaks recorded for Fort Ord and I'm too tired to figure out which ones are which. Three species in the list are called "live oaks": Quercus agrifolia, Q. chrysolepis, and Q. wislizeni. If you're curious and look at my embedded links, you'll see the subspecies look very different, with some having smooth leaf margins and others having jagged leaves.

I plant to edit this post with better information once I feel a bit better.

ps 03/28/11 - I originally posted this simply as live oaks, meaning oaks that keep their leaves throughout the year. After much help from commenters below and searching online, I've finally decided both sets of pictures are of the same species but different ages. Having looked into douglas-firs and Monterey pines, I know trees can change shape considerably as they mature. I found Cindy's comments below (of the Dipper Ranch blog fame) to be very informative. Also, Hastings Reserve and Las Pilitas Nursery have great keys and information about oaks specifically found in Monterey County and California. The next time I'm out at Fort Ord, I'll do my best to check the leaves, but I'm fairly confident of these IDs now.

fairy fingers ~ 02/20/11 ~ Garland Ranch

fairy fingers on valley oak wood
Clavaria vermicularis on Quercus lobata wood
more information
Fagaceae

It is thanks to fellow bloggers, like John Wall and Jim Johnson, who have helped me with fungal IDs, that I'm now not too afraid to take pics with hopes to properly identify them. Most online pics of this club and coral mushroom are bright white, but then again like the cauliflower mushroom I found at Jacks Peak, I think this fruiting body is a bit older. Oh, as an explanation of how I even know which oak is shown above, this is the branch that Andy and I married under before it broke off. We affectionately call this tree our wedding tree. As this tree dies, we've been amazed at how much life is growing on it. More to come from this tree...

wedding tree ~ 02/20/11 ~ Garland Ranch

wedding tree
Fagaceae

posted 03/02/11 - No, it wasn't our anniversary when we visited this tree back on February 20, 2011. That was the first sunny day after a week of nonstop rain and we wanted to take full advantage of the nicer weather and get outside. I'll admit I'm a bit sad to see this magnificent tree decline. Other valley oaks (Quercus lobata) were already sprouting new leaves, so I suspect this tree may not have much to show anymore in terms of its own growth. Andy was kind enough to point out to me that the dead branches are now supporting a variety of life, including numerous fence lizards, an unknown nest (shown in the first pic), and numerous fungi, mosses, and lichen. It's the cycle of life. I'm sure we'll visit our tree again come April 8th.

wedding tree ~ 04/08/10 ~ Garland Ranch

wedding tree
Fagaceae

This oak has certainly changed its shape from 4 years ago. I believe more branches have broken off; however, the foilage was seasonally advanced compared to years past. And for the first time, flowers were blooming profusely, like I had envisioned when we set our wedding date. Purples and blues were everywhere in the form of blue-eyed grasses, vetches, fiesta flowers, lupines, Chinese houses, and blue dicks. I plan to post additional ID'd pics later.

Doh!... I just realized I haven't actually ID'd this tree. I'm 90% sure it's a CA white oak, aka valley oak, (Quercus lobata). Like I've said before, I have this odd brain block around identifying tree species. As I was looking up appropriate links I found this blue oak (Quercus douglassi) site to be particularly interesting.

fiesta flower ~ 12/21/09 ~ Fort Ord

oak and fiesta flower
Boraginaceae (formerly Hydrophyllaceae) and Fagaceae

It feels like spring already in December! I'll have to double-check that the lush green, deeply lobed leaves are indeed fiesta flower.

oak ~ 04/08/09 ~ Garland Ranch

oak
Fagaceae

I'm starting to really appreciate the beauty of CA's oaks with their craggly branches and "old" character. Unfortunately, as much as I've tried, I'm only able to identify white and black oaks. I know there are more and I want to look this up. I have this peculiar mental block around most trees and I always have a hard time remembering them.

wedding tree ~ 04/08/09 ~ Garland Ranch

wedding tree
Fagaceae

As per our now annual visit to this oak tree... it looks very different.

wedding tree ~ 04/08/08 ~ Garland Ranch

wedding tree
Fagaceae

I can't find a picture of our wedding tree from 2007. We had just come back from several weeks in New Zealand and were tired of taking pictures. As long as we're in the area, I think it'll be our goal to visit this tree during the week of our anniversary.