a dead branch doesn't mean a dieing oak

What with the extended days of rain, followed by a Summer cold, we experienced a bout of severe cabin fever as the sun came out, so a few of the dead branches on the oak trees in the yard got pruned and immediately sealed with pruning sealer to limit the threat of oak wilt development. Those were the same branches that kept whacking us on the head and poking us in the face as we pulled buckthorn and prickly ash. Our muscles will be complaining tomorrow and Saturday, but emotionally we're feeling more satisfied than frustrated today. That's worth something.

barred owl perched on an oak's dead branch

Photo by J. Harrington

Several years ago we attended a conference on "nature writing" at the Audobon North Woods Center. While there we asked several people there if they could suggest explanations for why the lower branches of trees, particularly oaks, died off. No one we asked suggested a theory, but Peter Wohlleben, in The Hidden Life of Trees, tells us that

...oaks are trees that need light. They need very bright conditions to photosynthesize. Their ground-hugging solar panels don't produce any energy in the twilight of the understory, and the superfluous arrays are quickly done away with. [p. 68]

We believe this may help explain the dead branches on our oaks. Trees, some more so than others, focus their growth at their crowns where the most sunlight is available. Then again, some of the oaks we're looking at as we write, the ones we can see along the edge of the field behind the house, have dead branches that seem to be as exposed to the sun as those above and below the dead ones. Once again we're no doubt looking for too simple an explanation.

dragonfly perched on bare oak twig

Photo by J. Harrington

Dragonflies and hummingbirds, and sometimes barred owls, seem to prefer perching on the dead, bare branches, or are they just easier to observe there without the visual background noise of leaves surrounding them?

The Oak

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

. . . It is the last survivor of a race
Strong in their forest-pride when I was young.
I can remember when, for miles around,
In place of those smooth meadows and corn-fields,
There stood ten thousand tall and stately trees,
Such as had braved the winds of March, the bolt
Sent by the summer lightning, and the snow
Heaping for weeks their boughs. Even in the depth
Of hot July the glades were cool; the grass,
Yellow and parched elsewhere, grew long and fresh,
Shading wild strawberries and violets,
Or the lark’s nest; and overhead the dove
Had her lone dwelling, paying for her home
With melancholy songs; and scarce a beech
Was there without a honeysuckle linked
Around, with its red tendrils and pink flowers;
Or girdled by a brier-rose, whose buds
Yield fragrant harvest for the honey-bee
There dwelt the last red deer, those antler’d kings . . .
But this is as dream,—the plough has pass’d
Where the stag bounded, and the day has looked
On the green twilight of the forest-trees.
This oak has no companion! . . . . 

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.