Here are a few photos from my dad’s house from today. He lost about fifty oaks in the big snowstorm that we had two weeks ago. It is really sad to see them all down on the ground.
These big trees just can’t handle that much snow all at once.
This one would have smashed their house if it had fallen in a different direction. You can see their roof behind the tree…a little too close. Their neighbor did have their really beautiful old oak split into six pieces and it crashed through their bedroom roof. No one was hurt but it has left them devastated to lose their very old majestic oak tree.
Amid all this destruction, I found this pine sprouting in an older oak stump. Life really does cycle around and although it is sad to see the oaks down, it has cleaned out a lot of dead wood and eventually the woods will be more fire safe. For now, we have a huge clean-up job waiting for us.
We decided we should take our Kona dog out for a proper walk. She has not been out for her long walk in days. She was happy and we were feeling good too. The interesting thing about this walk was how many trees were down all along our regular walking trail. Many were actually across the trail and some were down in the meadows alongside it.
Mostly oaks had fallen which makes me sad, but they are clearly not designed for such a great snow like we had this week. The live oaks especially fared badly in the snow because they don’t lose all their leaves in the fall.
The leaves were my favorite part of the walk. The snow was sprinkled with leaves of all colors and shapes and sizes.
When the oaks fall down, you get to glimpse at what is going on at the top without climbing. The various kinds of lichen were amazing. We really must learn some more about lichens this winter. I will add it to the list.
The rains are coming and that will be the end of the Really Big Snow for us. My youngest is the one who will miss it the most. He was sick most of the time we had our big piles of snow to play in and he really needs to get in some more snow time. Perhaps it will snow again in the months to come and then he will be able to build his big snow fort and have snowball fights with his dad and brothers. It seems that snow is the great equalizer…..all my men love to get out and play in the cold stuff no matter their age and dignity level.
My oldest son and I had the opportunity to take a long walk together and enjoy the oaks and pines along the walking trail. He has such long legs that he ends up way in front of me most of the time but that gives me a chance to snap a few photos as we walk. He stops every now and then to let me catch up…..yep, I feel like an old lady.
Oaks make me happy. I love the variety of oaks with their different shapes and here in California we have quite a few to study. Last year we kept track of a Live Oak growing in our backyard. We also have quite a few scrub oaks in the back of our property.Here is a previous post on our oaks: Oak Challenge Entry
There is nothing like the smell of warm oak leaves in the sun.
Oak galls fascinate me and the boys think they are pretty interesting as well. Oak galls are basically abnormalities on plants caused by insects. We noticed that there are not as many as usual this autumn and we wonder what that means.
I love the shape of oak trees and this one at my dad’s house is a big old oak. I took an informal poll of my three boys and asked them which they preferred: oaks or pines? Two oaks and one pine…..I think if I had to make a quick answer without thinking too much I would pick oaks as well.
We have noticed how different the acorns are from different kinds of oaks.
We had a wet morning to observe the oaks in our backyard but I really like the way the wetness brought out the texture in the bark.
Here are leaves from one of our oaks. We are assuming the red parts are the new growth. We will have to keep checking to see if we are right.
I really like using the Peterson Field Guide-Western Trees book for our tree identification. The color plates show the leaves, the buds, and the acorns. Once you get an idea of which oak you think you have, there is a reference to a page number to read the narrative account along with a photo and range map. You can find the tree guide listed on the Autumn Series Squidoo lens (scroll down to the additional resources section).
We made leaf prints last week with our oak leaves and they are included in our nature journals for this challenge.
These challenges are helping us stay motivated to get outdoors which is always a good thing.
We took our usual walk the other day but we found something unusual.
These little pink growths were attached all over the leaves on the ground and we brought one home to identify it. I had an idea that it was gall of some sort but I thought it would be interesting to see if we could come up with an exact identification.
I Googled “pink gall oak” and here are a few of the things I found.
So there you have it.
Urchin Gall Wasp Antron quercusechinus
“There are many forms of these gall dwellings, and they may grow upon the root, branch, leaf, blossom, or fruit. The miraculous thing about each of them is that each kind of insect builds its magical house on a certain part of a certain species of tree or plant; and the house is always of a certain definite form on the outside and of a certain particular pattern within.” Handbook of Nature Study, page 335
You can read more about galls in the Handbook on pages 335-338.
We have a variety of oaks in our yard and on closer inspection, we have a lot of baby oak trees as well. The more we looked, the more seedlings we found to observe.
I pulled some out for us to examine the roots….they were really long.
Here is the oak seedling we pulled out and you could still see the remains of the original acorn too. Just what I need, an oak tree growing under the magnolia tree. Crazy thing is that I know how this acorn ended up far from the mother oak. Western scrub jays will poke acorns into the garden in various spots as a means of storage. They will not come back and find all the acorns and that allows a new tree to sprout far from the original oak.
Here is another kind of oak growing in the backyard.
We collected a number of leaves to examine indoors and to try to identify which kinds of oaks we have in the backyard.The different shapes of leaves were interesting to note. We had big leaves and little leaves. They were shiny or dull, pointed or rounded, and in a variety of shades of greens.
Here is the collection.
California Black Oak-leaves are really large and have deep lobes and bristle tips
Either Interior Live Oak or Canyon Live Oak-I need to go do some more close observation of the trunks and acorns
I am pretty sure this is a Valley Oak.
I can not believe there are so many different kinds of oaks right here in our backyard. We are literally surrounded by oaks. I didn’t even collect leaves from all of them. I know we have a California Scrub Oak in the far back of the property.
Now for the great acorns we collected at my parent’s house. Look at that big guy. He is a beauty. I am fairly certain it came from an Interior Live Oak tree.
The Native Americans in our area used the acorns as a staple in their diet. They collected the acorns and stored them in granaries. They would grind the acorns up to make a flour. Here is a link that explains it simply. The Indian Grinding Rock State Park is near where I live and it is a fascinating place to visit to get an idea of how the acorn was used by the Miwok Indians. Actually there is a place on the creek near my parent’s house that has grinding rocks that were used by the Miwok that inhabited the area before the California Gold Rush. The oak trees were a vital part of their lives.
“Nature study is, despite all discussions and perversions, a study of nature; it consists of simple, truthful observations that may, like beads on a string, finally be threaded upon the understanding and thus held together as a logical and harmonious whole.” Handbook of Nature Study, page 1
Outdoor Hour Challenge #33 Trees-Oaks
1. This week read in the Handbook of Nature Study pages 639-642 to learn more about oak trees. Even if you don’t think you have any oaks in your area, it is still interesting to read the information for future reference. Make sure to note the ideas suggested for studying oaks in the lesson at the end of the section-Lesson 176.
2. Spend 15 to 20 minutes outdoors this week with your children in your own yard or on your own street. The weather should be getting cooler for most of us and it is a very enjoyable time to be outdoors. Take advantage of this time before the cold and wet weather sets in. This week you will have two suggested activities. In addition, how about taking a photo of your child with a tree in your yard? This is a great way to document growth of both the tree and your child over time.
*If you have an oak tree of any variety in your yard or on your street, use the ideas from the lesson on page 641 and 642 to guide your observation of the oak tree. Take along your magnifying lens if you want to get a closer look at the bark or leaves of your tree as you spend time outdoors. Don’t forget to look for acorns. If you have an oak tree to observe, it would be fun to share a photo of your acorn. There are many types of acorn shapes and sizes and it would be great to see what your particular acorn looks like.
*If you do not have a oak tree to observe or you have an additional time period for nature study, choose another variety of tree to observe. Study the leaves on your tree and then describe the shape of the leaf, the edges, the color on top and below, count its ribs and veins, and then describe how it feels and how it smells. Encourage your children to observe quietly for a few minutes of each outdoor time period.
3. After your outdoor time, spend a few minutes discussing any trees you saw. Talk about anything that interested your child. Ask them to give you a brief description of something they saw while on their nature walk. Refer back to challenge number two for more ideas on how to encourage oral narration of your nature time. This would also be a good time to look up any oak trees you observed in your field guide and see if you can learn more about your particular oak tree. If your child found something else of interest, look it up in the index of the Handbook of Nature Study. Read over the pages before your next nature study time so you will be ready to share the information with your child.
4. Make sure to give time and the opportunity for a nature journal entry. There is a suggestion in the Handbook of Nature Study to draw your oak in the fall and then again in the winter. Also, the Handbook suggests finding three leaves from your oak that differ in form, and then sketch them in your notebook. If you would like to complete a notebook page, see the link below to choose one for your child’s journal. A nature journal entry can be as simple as a sketch, a label, and a date. See challenges two and three for alternatives to drawing in your nature journal.
5. If you identified a tree this week, add it to your list of trees in the front or back of your nature journal.
You can link up by clicking the carnival button and sharing your blog entry or you can send the information directly to me: harmonyfinearts@yahoo.com.
You can purchase all of the first ten challenges in a convenient ebook along with custom notebook pages.
“Children should also become familiar with trees at an early age. They should pick about six in the winter when the leaves are gone, perhaps an elm, a maple, a beech, etc, and watch them during the year.” Charlotte Mason in Modern English, volume 1, page 52
Way back last August of 2007 we started our first tree study out in the woods. We took a piece of yarn and staked out a big square around the tree and did observations within that square and then also about the tree. The oak is really big and has lots of interesting things about it.
Here is our yarned off square. You can barely see the purple yarn unless you click and enlarge the photo.
Not much there except a few new little baby oak trees.
And near-by there was this poison oak turning red…..watch out for that stuff.
Then we noticed that as we walked we were being stuck by this plant….star thistle. I would consider this a WEED! Our backyard had this plant growing all over the backside when we moved in twenty years ago and my husband has very lovingly removed it all one plant at a time. We found you have to pull it up roots and all in order to get rid of it. It is an invasive weed in our area.
After we got back to the car, we realized our shoelaces and socks were covered with stickers of all kinds. They stick like velcro.
Well that wraps up our year-long tree study for now. We will probably keep our yarn up and continue through another year to see if we see any more changes.
“A green little world With me at its heart! A house grown by magic, Of a green stem, a part.
My walls give me food And protect me from foes, I eat at my leisure, In safety repose.
My house hath no window, ‘Tis dark as the night! But I make me a door And batten it tight.
And when my wings grow I throw wide my door; And to my green castle I return nevermore.”
The above poem about galls is shared on page 338 of theHandbook of Nature Study. We found this interesting object on our nature walk a few weeks ago. I knew it was called a gall but I wasn’t sure at all where it came from or what it was for. After doing some research intheHandbook of Nature Study, I now know a lot about these interesting little houses.
Here’s what it says on page 335:“There are many forms of these gall dwellings, and they may grow upon the root, branch, leaf, blossom, or fruit. The miraculous thing about them is that each kind of insect builds its magical house on a certain part of a certain species of tree or plant; and the house is always of a certain definite form on the outside and of a certain particular pattern within. Many widely differing species of insects are gall makers; and he who is skilled in gall lore knows, when he looks at the outside of the house, knows just what insect dwells within it.”
So now I know it is a home for an insect. I have grown up around these objects but have never taken the time to really get to know them. Here is some more on how they are formed.
From page 335-336“A little, four-winged, fly-like creature, a wasp, lays its eggs, early in the season, on the leaf of the scarlet oak. As soon as the larva hatches, it begins to eat into the substance of one of the leaf veins. As it eats, it discharges through its mouth into the tissues of the leaf a substance which is secreted from glands within its body. Immediately the building of the house commences; out around the little creature grow radiating vegetable fibers, showing by their position plainly that the grub is the center of all of this new growth; meanwhile, a smooth, thin covering completely encloses the globular house; larger and larger grows the house until we have what we are accustomed to call an oak apple, so large is it.”
Our square in the woods hasn’t changed much since last month. We did find some green acorns on the ground and there were quite a few more crunchy leaves on the ground.This trip we focused on trying to find some insects on our tree but we couldn’t find any at all. We did enjoy the variety of moss and lichen on the tree trunk.
Do you see the different kinds of lichen in the photo? Do you see the spider web?We also enjoyed drawing the tree on our notebook sheet that will include drawings of the tree in all four seasons.
Here are a couple notebook pages you can use for your study:
This system seems to work for us. We attach an empty ziploc bag to our clipboard and then use it to hold our little “treasures” that we find along the way. Until we devised this system, I always had my pockets filled with items the boys wanted to bring home. Now they can easily slip them into the baggie and hold it themselves.
We used our books to identify the tree as an interior live oak. We collected some leaves and acorns and then took a walk down the hill to see what we could find.
As we walked, we heard some sort of hawk above us screeching loudly. I could tell he was circling around us by the way the sound was carrying over the hill. Here are a few things we saw as we hiked back down the hill to the car.
Some sort of fungus.
Leaves from a California Buckeye tree
A beautiful sappy pine cone.
We had a great morning in the woods and will look forward to checking our square again next month.
That afternoon we ended our day with a bike ride with a friend on a local bike trail. The skies were grey but the boys had enjoyed their day outside.
