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Jumping Cholla, from America's Deserts, Guide to Plants and Animals
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From
where I sit at my computer, I can see three oak trees. All their leaves are
about thumb-size, maybe a bit larger, and kind of oval-shaped. On the left is a
native Coast Live Oak. The leaves are very stiff or tough with little spiky tips
along the leaf margin. It is a tree well adapted to California’s Mediterranean
climate with the hot, dry summers and the only rain usually in winter and
spring. This oak is not about to lose lots of water through large, soft leaves.
And the spiky tips may also deter some animals from eating the leaves. Its large
size, over 40 feet, shades much of our back patio in the late afternoon. Which
is really nice since summer temperatures regularly pass 90 degrees F. The
middle tree is a 30-foot-tall scrubby oak (too big and tree-like for a true
Scrub Oak) of unknown species. It loses many of its leaves in the fall – but
not all – so during the winter I can see through its branches to the mountains
beyond. Then, in the spring, a mass of gray-green leaves grow more and more
densely until the tree becomes a green wall straight outside my window. Now, in
summer, I can only see the tip of a mountain peak to the tree’s left and a bit
of ridge and slope to the tree’s right. Someday, it will probably grow tall
and wide enough to hide the mountains altogether. To the
right of my view out the window is a Cork Oak. In Portugal, wine corks (and
maybe other types of corks, too) are cut out of the very thick, spongy bark of
these trees. This doesn’t hurt the oak because the living part is actually
beneath the protective bark (as in all trees). The tree is left with enough
intact bark for protection and is given time to recover before corks are cut out
again. Our Cork Oak was planted 30 years ago and its 40-foot-high branches shade
the back yard during the middle of the day in the summer. When new
yellowish-green leaves start to grow in the spring, the old leaves turn bright
yellow and drop. This process goes on for about 4 months (4 months!) until all
the new leaves have “pushed out” the old ones. Boy, I get really tired of
raking those leaves... In the
spring, resident and migratory birds move about the trees, singing and calling
or eating insects. Then, in the fall and winter, squirrels and jays gather the
mature acorns. I used to
wish I could see more of the mountains and thought about keeping the three oaks
trimmed. But as I watch them grow taller year by year, they’ve become like
friends, peering in at my window and keeping me company. I love watching the
sunlight change the colors of the leaves throughout the day until each tree is
touched with sunset’s deep golden-red. I pause in my writing to watch the
parent birds feed their newly-fledged, chirping, wing-fluttering young as they
hop among the leaves. And when the branches sway, I remember a poem I learned as
a child: “Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I. But when the trees bow
their heads, the wind is passing by.”
Presentation, "Connecting Reading, Writing and Art in Nature Study"  |
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