For a Yankee within the South, all the things concerning the atmosphere scares you off. Warmth. Humidity. Flying termite season (severely, it’s a factor). However this cold-and-snow-loving Northerner braved the bugs just lately, partially, to get away — bodily and mentally — from a divorce. As amicable and respectful as our divorce was, it nonetheless felt like a type of non secular loss of life. The top of a life, if not my very own life.
So I ate, prayed, beloved my manner down to go to good pals within the Gulf Coast city of Bay Saint Louis, Miss. I left with a crush on a particular tree — and this week that features Easter Sunday, Earth Day and Arbor Day looks like a grand time to share why your coronary heart may flutter somewhat for the southern dwell oak too.
As I walked to a espresso store a couple of blocks from my pals’ place, I noticed it. Subsequent to a velocity restrict signal. A tree branch doing one thing I’d by no means seen earlier than.
To the suitable, I might see an excellent oak’s school-bus-long department dip downward — the place it had not simply touched the bottom, however had saved rising and buried itself into the soil. Upon nearer inspection, I noticed that an entire new trunk had emerged from this identical buried woody mass. The sagging department had given rise to a brand new tree.
I did what we do these days and searched and searched and searched the online to know what I’d seen. The bushes had been southern dwell oak. It seems what I noticed was a pure type of “layering,” whereby a department touches the bottom and produces adventitious roots pushed by hypoxia and the hunt for assets. That sagging department by no means absolutely “dies” when it hits the bottom, however sooner or later it could actually stop to be a part of its authentic tree. With new roots, seeks a more recent, fuller life, which it finds as a second tree.
Zoom out from that incredible department to the southern dwell oak — Quercus virginiana — and you may see life itself. Native to the Southeastern United States, they’re identified for his or her longevity, residing past a thousand years. A keystone species, southern dwell oaks host and help many different various species together with Spanish mosses and little ferns. They sponsor an entire ecosystem of their large wood arms.
They’re so sturdy that settlers used to lash themselves to southern dwell oaks as “storm trees” to journey out hurricanes. And the world’s oldest ship nonetheless afloat, the USS Structure, nicknamed “Previous Ironsides,” commissioned in 1794 by President George Washington — incorporates a frame product of southern dwell oak.
But it surely’s much less these traits than the character of the tree that stands out. Its form particularly. It’s nearly horizontal. It reaches for you, which isn’t what you’re conditioned to count on from a giant tree. Redwoods and the like are skyscrapers, straight and aloof, whereas southern dwell oaks unfold their branches throughout you. It’s as near a hug from a tree as you will get. (Treehuggers, take be aware: That is your most well-liked accomplice for those who’re on the lookout for some leafy motion.)
Of the 3 trillion trees on Earth, two southern dwell oaks specifically stand out to me. The McDonogh Oak in New Orleans’ Metropolis Park is greater than 800 years previous, lengthy sufficient to succeed in again to the Magna Carta and Crusades. Hurricane Katrina felled greater than 2,000 bushes in Metropolis Park, however not McDonogh, although the grandfatherly tree now requires crutches to maintain its huge limbs aloft. Head east an hour or so and also you’ll discover the even-more-striking Friendship Oak on the Gulf campus of the College of Southern Mississippi. It’s previous too, at 538 years, so it breathed the identical air as Christopher Columbus and the 18 generations of people that’ve lived from its delivery till now. The Friendship Oak spreads out with 10 tentacles dipping into and up from the grass like a pleasant green-and-grounded Loch Ness monster.
Typically we get sidetracked somewhat with the bunnies and baskets round this time of yr. However we are able to get past these a bit to see the wonder and bounty in our on a regular basis organic world. Easter, Earth Day and Arbor Day — all taking place in the identical week this yr, this Sunday, Tuesday and Friday — share a typical emphasis on renewal, each non secular and environmental. And someplace in the course of this milieu is the southern dwell oak’s technique of layering. Heck, even its identify consists of the phrase “dwell.” (That may appear redundant when naming a plant, however this stuff earn the excellence.)
It’s good on occasion to look out and see that our bushes are exceptional, not simply assets or obstacles or ornaments. They’re life itself — part of our lives, and we’re a part of theirs. They need to give us hope.
Getting house to Colorado, I used to be greeted by vistas of pine and scrub oak, in time to see the buds opening on the ends of so many twigs. Certain, our native bushes aren’t as knock-down spectacular because the southern dwell oak, however their potential and promise is similar: Every pinecone and acorn has an opportunity to develop its personal manner into one other mighty tree, a thought that gave me a flash of hope.
Easter eggs are in all places, if the place to look.
ML Cavanaugh is the writer of the forthcoming e-book “Greatest Scar Wins: How You Can Be Extra Than You Have been Earlier than.” @MLCavanaugh
