"Sunday is a day of rest".
I slept in until 6:00 a.m.
Mrs ERJ is still not fully recovered from the flu. I went to Mass today while she stayed home.
I took a nap once I got home.
Very little blog-worthy activity happened.
Bonus Images
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| Refrigerator Door Art. Quicksilver, age 3 |
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| Bur Oak twigs from a fire-ecology adapted strain |
Hope that flu doesn't cycle through again friend.
ReplyDeleteLaughing as we have granddaughters' "art" also.
Fire adapted ecology strain? Can you expand on that a bit please? Wasn't aware that your area was so prone to widespread fires like California.
The current thinking in academia is that Native Americans were extremely aggressive in using "burns" to reduce tick populations, control brush (that enemies could use as cover) and to favor oak savannas and to make movement from one village to another less encombered by brush.
DeleteOne map here: https://external-preview.redd.it/bUOFKYmiUK9QmZmjyqTiysfLz8AvT22ZkR2UoIeLTso.png?auto=webp&s=df83ef64e393789cfa8c4a52fb3bca06212324c7 showing estimates based on char data and ring counts of ancient trees.
There are higher resolution maps but this is the best I could do in five minutes.
Locally, one can "map" pre-Columbian burns by place names like Plains Highway, Hickory Road and so on.
Look at this map, too. https://driftlessprairies.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/PC2FM-fire-frequency-map-1.jpg
DeleteAs ERJ stated, the Amerindians were noted (or, at least thought to) for frequent use of fire - on a regular basis, so there was rarely the great accumulation of fuel on the floor that causes the great 'forest-fire' conflagrations that we now have, courtesy of 80 years of Smokey the Bear suppressing fires.
DeleteAs demonstrated in his photo of the bur oak twigs, branch, even young bur oak seedlings and first-year growth are covered in that thick corky bark. I see occasional bur oaks that lack much of that corkiness, and think... there is probably introgression of Swamp White Oak in their ancestry.
The large bur oak acorns were enclosed - often almost completely - in a thick cap, usually with prominent 'fringe' on the edge... if they dropped with that fringe & acorn oriented downward, it served to protect the acorn when those rapidly-burning grass fires swept through.
As Joe shows in the following post, the native range of bur oak extends from Mexico up into Canada. There is a quite a bit of variability among individuals in a species that widely distributed, acorn size, shape and cap morphology being quite diverse. I have bur oak selections in my collection that run from 8 acorns/lb (with cap removed) collected in Alabama, to >100/lb from trees in Manitoba. There is a subspecies (var. mandanensis) which lacks the prominent fringe on the edge of the cap, which gave it its common name, but all other features of the tree shout "Bur Oak'!
If I'm not too late a full moon and snow cover might allow cool night pictures.
ReplyDelete