Friday quiz – guest inquisitor!

Reader Ginny Stibolt passed this one on to mull over the weekend:

“We stayed at the Llano River State Park in Texas where I spotted this weird growth pattern of a gnarly oak–it’s like a puddle of trunk from which the main trunk arises. The camp host, who seemed to be well informed, said that these were Spanish oaks in the white oak division and that a root disease causes the expansion of the base of the trees. About 1/4 of them, here in the camping area, have this malady and often new sprouts grow from the wide base. Spanish oak does not seem to be the “correct” common name, and in looking at the native oaks for Texas, I couldn’t readily identify it. So a mystery or two…”

 

So what kind of oak is this, and why does it have this weird trunk base?

Ginny has an update, and I’ll post it on Monday.

Published by

Linda Chalker-Scott

Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott has a Ph.D. in Horticulture from Oregon State University and is an ISA certified arborist and an ASCA consulting arborist. She is WSU’s Extension Urban Horticulturist and a Professor in the Department of Horticulture, and holds two affiliate associate professor positions at University of Washington. She conducts research in applied plant and soil sciences, publishing the results in scientific articles and university Extension fact sheets. Linda also is the award-winning author of five books: the horticultural myth-busting The Informed Gardener (2008) and The Informed Gardener Blooms Again (2010) from the University of Washington Press and Sustainable Landscapes and Gardens: Good Science – Practical Application (2009) from GFG Publishing, Inc., and How Plants Work: The Science Behind the Amazing Things Plants Do from Timber Press (2015). Her latest effort is an update of Art Kruckeberg’s Gardening with Native Plants of the Pacific Northwest from UW Press (2019). In 2018 Linda was featured in a video series – The Science of Gardening – produced by The Great Courses. She also is one of the Garden Professors – a group of academic colleagues who educate and entertain through their blog and Facebook pages. Linda’s contribution to gardeners was recognized in 2017 by the Association for Garden Communicators as the first recipient of their Cynthia Westcott Scientific Writing Award. "The Garden Professors" Facebook page - www.facebook.com/TheGardenProfessors "The Garden Professors" Facebook group - www.facebook.com/groups/GardenProfessors Books: http://www.sustainablelandscapesandgardens.com

4 thoughts on “Friday quiz – guest inquisitor!”

  1. Don’t know the oak species, but the trunk thing looks like the lignotubers that eucalyptus trees produce. It’s a fire adaptation– if the tree is burnt it can resprout from the lignotuber.

  2. Ok, wait, we are talking Texas where every thing is really big, so perhaps that growth is a really, really big wasp gall? Ok, maybe not.

Leave a Reply