Posted on by tonytomeo · 50 Comments

Six on Saturday: Fire Season

 

California really does have the same four seasons that the rest of America has. They just happen to be somewhat subdued in some of the milder climates. The rumor that California has only two seasons, summer and a few days of not-summer, is completely inaccurate. In fact, besides the traditional four season, we have a fifth season that overlaps at least summer and autumn. It reality, this season never ends. It is always ‘fire season’.

Like any other season, fire season affects how we garden here. We prefer to grow plants that are less combustible, which is often contrary to the preference for native specie. In suburban and rural areas, we must manage native vegetation and keep it away from our homes and other buildings. When the weather gets smoky from forest fires, some of us postpone gardening chores for healthier weather.

The Rincon Fire near Paradise Park (not to be confused with Paradise) burned for a few days a week and a half ago, and filled the Valley with thick smoke. By the time that smoke cleared out, smoke moved in from the Camp Fire that burned Paradise more than two hundred miles to the north. Smoke from the Woolsey Fire and the Hill Fire that both started on the same day in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties stayed to the south. The Bear Fire, which was the second relatively small forest fire in our region, started and was contained just yesterday, just a few miles outside of Boulder Creek. Most of us were not aware of it until after it was contained.

Incidentally, a 50% chance of rain is predicted for next Wednesday.

1. Clear blue sky finally appeared on Thursday morning.P81117

2. The orange moon demonstrates how smoky the sky was on the previous evening. It is not easy to zoom in and get a good picture of the moon.P81117+

3. Ponderosa pine forests are the more combustible parts of our region. The darker understory is a mix of coast live oak, canyon live oak, madrone and other chaparral flora. The dead ponderosa pine that I got a picture of for ‘Six on Saturday: Dia de los Muertos’ is to the right in this picture. Sunsets were spectacularly colorful before the smoke blew away. I can not explain why the color was so bland when this picture was taken.P81117++

4. Our debris pile continues to accumulate more biomass from the landscapes and surrounding forests. It is not yet big in this picture. It will get significantly bigger before it gets taken away. Once gone, we start the process all over again. It never ends. There is so much forest out there, and we are constantly trying to keep it away from the buildings.P81117+++

5. These numbers on the side of my work vehicle allowed the volunteer firefighter who used to drive it to go into areas that had been evacuated ahead of forest fires. Several of our vehicles are outfitted with these decals.P81117++++

6. This is the picture that you probably did not want to see. It is what remains of the home of one of my colleague’s clients in Malibu after the Woolsey Fire moved through. The front garden was exquisite. The home was even better.P81117+++++

This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate:

https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/

Posted on by tonytomeo · 11 Comments

Horridculture – Bad Name

51104Junipers have a bad name. So do eucalypti. Too many of the wrong types were planted back at a time when they were too trendy. Those that were planted into inappropriate situations grew up to cause problems. The names of all junipers and eucalypti are now synonymous with those problems, even though there are many types of both genera that are quite practical for landscape purposes.
Get over it.
There are many junipers and eucalypti that are very good options for some landscape purposes. They need only minimal watering once established, and many will survive with none at all when mature. Some types of juniper grow as very low and very dense ground cover. With proper pruning, others can develop as exquisitely sculptural shrubbery or even small trees. (Just do NOT shear them!) Because of their very complaisant roots, some of the smaller eucalypti work very well as street trees.
I am certainly not promoting either junipers or eucalypti. They will not work for every application. I am merely saying that they should not be automatically dismissed because of their names. They were once overly popular for a variety of reasons, and those reasons are still valid.
However, I will say that there are a few species and varieties of each that are worth avoiding. They are likely what originally justified the bad reputations that are now shared by all of their relatives. For example, blue gum eucalyptus that was planted as a timber crop so long ago really is MUCH too big and messy for home gardens. Even where space is sufficient, there are probably better options.
Some of the current fads are also worth avoiding, or at least questioning. Some are very likely to earn a ‘bad name’ in the future, either because there will be too many of them, or because their faults will become evident as they mature. Because so many get planted within such a short time, many that mature at the about the same rate will develop their faults at about the same time.
For example, crape myrtle is such a useful and complaisant tree that it has been planted too commonly for just about every situation in which a tree is desired. It is resilient. It is complaisant with concrete. It blooms spectacularly. It colors splendidly in autumn. It really is an excellent small scale or medium tree for small garden spaces or near utility easements. It works very well in narrow park strips where larger trees would displace concrete. Yet, despite all the attributes, it is not good for everything, and does not get big enough to become a substantial shade tree, as it so commonly gets planted for. In the future, there will be so many crape myrtles in so many of the wrong situations that they will be considered to be too common.
Queen palm is another example. It used to be somewhat uncommon and respected. Through the 1990s, big box stores were selling them like junipers and eucalypti decades earlier. They happen to be very appealing palms that are more practical than the formerly more common Mexican fan pale, but have become so common that they were very often planted into situations that they are not appropriate for. Those that are under utility easements will need to be removed when their canopies start to encroach into utility cables. Because they are palms, they can not be pruned around the cables. Those that are able to mature will outgrow the reach of those who maintain their own gardens, or typical gardeners, necessitating attention from more expensive tree services. Like crape myrtles, they will also lose their appeal in the future.70222

Posted on by tonytomeo · 15 Comments

Big Trees Are Bad Houseplants

P81111By ‘big trees’, I don’t mean the various ficus trees that can grow up to the ceiling, and be quite happy inside. I am referring to the shade trees that live out in the yard, or forest trees that live beyond that. They are outside for a reason . . . or actually, several reasons. They are too big to bring inside. They probably would not like the climate inside. No one wants to rake fallen autumn leaves inside. Well, you get the point.
Unfortunately, on rare occasion, big trees that are outside end up partly inside by falling or dropping limbs onto the homes that they provide shade for. Just like trees seem to fall onto certain types of cars more than others ( tonytomeo.com/2018/11/04/trees-hate-cars ), trees seem to fall onto certain types of homes more than others. The difference between the homes that trees seem to dislike and the cars that they seem to dislike, is that there are actually reasons why some types of architecture is more susceptible to falling limbs or trees.
First of all, just as some trees seem to avoid falling on cars, some seem to avoid falling on houses.
Coastal redwoods in landscape situations are remarkably stable. In my entire career, I have inspected only three that have fallen. One had a massive pair of trunks that split apart and fell away from each other. Although they were on the fence line between two closely set urban homes, and there was almost no place for them to fall without destroying one home or another, they did the seemingly impossible. They literally fell onto the property line. One trunk fell out into the street. The other fell back into the backyards of the homes behind. The fence was pressed into the ground. The landscapes were seriously damaged. Gutters were stripped from both adjacent homes. Otherwise, there was NO structural damage to any of the homes. I am still amazed at how minimal the damage was!
The massive coast live oak two doors down from my former home in town was just as talented. It sprawled out over its associated home and the front yards of the two adjacent homes. It was so broad that I would not have believed that it could have fallen down without destroying one of the homes. Yet, it did exactly that . . . as I watched from my dining room. During a windy storm, it fell right toward me, and landed squarely in the front yard next door. It broke a few rafters on the edges of the eaves, and tore the gutters off, but that was the worst of the damage. It somehow found the best spot to fall where it would cause the least amount of damage.
Not all homes are so fortunate.
Victorian homes though, do not seem to be targeted by trees as much as others are. Most are closer to downtown, away from tall or very broad forest trees. Many are on somewhat narrow parcels that can not accommodate disproportionately large trees like the coast live oak in the picture above. Broadly sprawling trees tend to be too low to extend their limbs over the roofs of taller two story Victorian homes. Although taller than most other types of homes, two story Victorian homes do not occupy as much area as other homes, so are not such big targets.
Low profile homes of ranch architecture, or similar types of architecture, are more likely to be damaged by falling limbs or trees. Many happen to be located in suburban or rural areas, closer to bigger and broader forest trees. Their wider parcels can accommodate larger trees. Their roofs are low enough for trees to extend limbs over. Because they tend to be on a single level, they occupy more area, so are larger targets.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 11 Comments

More Smoke

P81110KFire has always been a part of life in most of California. That is why almost all native flora benefits from it, and has developed an efficient system and schedule for not only living with it, but exploiting it.
Within a few years after a fire, the pioneer species are the first to regenerate. They are aggressive, but short lived. Some are annuals. Others are trees that grow fast and then die out as the slower growing but longer lived trees dominate. Some of the longer lived trees might have been there all along, since they have developed ways of surviving fire.
Big valley oaks and coast live oaks that live out in the open away from other forest trees can survive for centuries because the grasses around them burn off fast and relatively harmlessly. Giant redwoods and some pines survive by standing high above the more combustible fuel below. Coastal redwood survives for centuries by being less combustible than other species. Desert fan palms protect their single terminal buds inside their massive non combustible trunks, while their beards of old dead foliage burns hot enough to incinerate competing species. There are too many ingenious ways that plants survive fire and even use it to their advantage to write about; but the point is that they know what they are doing, and they know how to live with fire.
This system of ecology has been disrupted, but not just by people cutting down too many trees and starting too many fires. The problem now is that not enough trees are getting cut down, and fires are unable to burn that which relies on burning.
In this region, pioneer species and an unnatural mix of forest trees moved in where the redwoods were harvested. This makes what had been less combustible redwood forest more combustible than it naturally is. It will take centuries for the redwoods to reclaim their territory and crowd out more of the hardwood trees. Also, because the redwoods regenerate with many trunks from each individual trunk that was harvested, even the redwoods are more crowded and combustible than they would naturally be. While they are still relatively young, their foliar canopies are low and intermingled with the other more combustible trees. It is certainly not possible to cut down enough trees to repair the damage, but protecting too many of the wrong trees and outlawing selective harvest of second growth redwood only promotes combustibility of the local forests.
Other forests, whether formerly harvested or not, experience similar problems. Because they are not burning as frequently as they used to, they are not being regularly purged and restored, but are instead becoming more crowded and combustible than they would naturally be. Diseases and pathogens are proliferating in the geriatric vegetation, and vegetation that succumbs provide more fuel, which also enhances combustibility.
Although there are many (MANY) more fires that are started by human activity now than there ever was naturally, such fires can not burn the vast areas that naturally occurring fires had naturally burned. There are just too many of us living and working here. Forests that are deprived of fire continue to proliferate more combustible biomass. Again, there is no remedy to this. Fires must be controlled and confined as much as possible.
Paradise is gone now. It burned on Thursday. Our region more than two hundred miles to the south is gray with abundant smoke from the Camp Fire that continues to burn there. Two other major fires burn in Ventura and Los Angeles Counties, more than three hundred miles to the south of here. Paradise Park just to the south of here was protected from the much smaller Rincon Fire that filled the Valley with harsh smoke for days after it was contained. Sadly, for this region, this is all part of nature.P81110K+

I do not remember on what days these pictures were taken. The first picture at the top was taken toward the sunrise, just prior to sunrise. The second picture above was taken later after noon, probably on the same day. The two pictures below were taken in the evening, perhaps on the day after. P81110K++P81110K+++

Posted on by tonytomeo · 24 Comments

Six on Saturday: Tangly Cottage Gardening Journal

 

tanglycottage.wordpress.com is where you can find it. This is a blog about gardening, gardens, life, and of course, Skooter the kitty, in and around Ilwaco, in the very southwestern corner of Washington, where the Columbia River flows into the Pacific Ocean. Like so many blogs, it shares compelling insight about a culture and a region that might be very different from what one is accustomed to. Then again, it might be compellingly similar . . . or even unexpectedly familiar. You can decide for yourself.

I have been to Ilwaco only once, about twenty years ago. I spent the night in a campground there while driving from Silverdale, west of Seattle, to Saint Helens, north of Portland. It was certainly not a direct trip. That would have been a two and a half hour drive. I was on vacation, so drove around the Olympic Peninsula. I sort of intended on returning someday, but never did.

After all these years, it has been fascinating to read about the flora of the gardens of the region. When I was there, I was more interested in the native flora outside of town. Ilwaco still looks something like I remember it to look like, although I think that there is more landscaping downtown now.

A while back, I commented on Gladiolus papillio that was blooming in a planter box in downtown Ilwaco. I was impressed that it was such a reliable perennial species of gladiolus. I had been wanting to grow a species of gladiolus that was more perennial than than the common summer blooming bulbs that I am familiar with, but had not decided on which ones to try. Anyway, in response to my comment, the author of ‘Tangly Cottage Gardening Journal’ offered to send me a few of the bulbs! How could I refuse?

These six pictures are of those Gladiolus papillio bulbs that came from Ilwaco in Washington.

1. It is so excellent to get a package in the mail from such an exotic and far away place! It got here very fast. It was in my mail only two days after being postmarked on October 25.P81110

2. The contents of the package are even more excellent than the package itself! There were nearly fifty bulbs here! I planted them on the first of November, a bit more than a week ago.P81110+

3. The bulbs were planted in three groups of about a dozen, with two groups of about half a dozen between them. The first group is partly buried here because a bit of soil fell back into the hole before I got this picture.P81110++

4. This is how the same first group of bulbs looks completely buried. Aren’t they pretty? Never mind the calla. It is not vigorous enough to bother the Gladiolus papillio.P81110+++

5. This is the planting bed where the Gladiolus papillio bulbs were planted. They are up in back, in a row that extends from the left edge of the picture to the corner of the trellis with the espaliered camellia. The pinboard and mailbox in the top right corner of the picture are at the Post Office next door. I would have preferred to plant the bulbs in front of the Post Office, but there is no place to do so over there. I am pleased that these Gladiolus papillio were planted in a public space almost in front of the Post Office because that is where they originated in Ilwaco. As the proliferate, I intend to take a few to my downtown planter box in Los Gatos, and might even share a few with the lady who tends to the planter box next door to the Los Gatos Post Office.P81110++++

6. This is the Mount Hermon Post Office is next door.P81110+++++

This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate:

https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/

Posted on by tonytomeo · 16 Comments

Horridculture – Blame

P81106The response to the brief article that I wrote about the smoke from a small and localized wildfire on Sunday is not easy to dismiss. The original article is at https://tonytomeo.com/2018/11/04/smoke/ . It is about the smoke from the small and localized Rincon Fire, and goes on to discuss how the clear cut harvesting of redwood more then a century ago enhanced the combustibility of the forest. It was shared to Facebook, including the Facebook page of Felton League.

The article did not blame anyone for starting the fire. I read it again just to be certain. I said nothing about arsonists, the homeless, homeless arsonists, or anything of the sort! Blame, in regard to the Rincon Fire, is not relevant to horticulture, forestry, arboriculture or anything that I write about.

We all know that there are mentally ill people who are homeless because they do not function well enough to maintain a domestic lifestyle. Some are potentially dangerous because they can do things, such as start fires, without thinking about it. There are also those who can accidentally start fires as they are just trying to stay warm when the weather gets cold out in the forests where they live.

Do we really believe that blaming and vilifying the homeless or mentally ill helps? Chasing them from their encampments and farther out into the forests, as so many suggest, only increases the innate hazards by relocating them into areas that are more inaccessible and more combustible. If we really are so concerned, we should want such hazards relocated to more localized and accessible situations. The severely mentally ill who can not manage a descent lifestyle simply should not be homeless.

Furthermore, what about the vast majority of fires that are caused by electrical malfunction? Why are we not wanting to outlaw electricity? What about the fires that are caused by sparks from lawn mowers and weed whackers? Shouldn’t such machines be outlawed? What about forest fires that start as house fires? Should we blame those who live in homes? Who do we blame for all those combustible trees that grow wild in the forests?

I intend to resume writing mostly and perhaps nearly exclusively about horticultural topics after today. It is what I am qualified to write about. I apologize for this deviation. If I eventually establish a blog regarding homelessness, I will be sure to share a link to it here.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 32 Comments

Smoke!

P81104K.JPGWhat a surprise. There was none when I went in to use the computer as the sun came up into a clear blue sky this morning. When I came outside just a few hours later, it was everywhere. It was so thick and so aromatic that it was obviously very close, but it did not smell like it was in the ponderosa pines around Scott’s Valley where I happened to be at the time. Once I got on the road back to Felton, I could see that besides the monochromatic ambient smoke that obscured the surrounding hills, a prominent and much thicker brown cloud of smoke hovered low over the San Lorenzo Valley. The smoke was even thicker in Felton, and obscures the range to the west where Bonny Doon is. As I write this in Felton Covered Bridge Park, ash is falling onto the computer screen.
The fire has apparently been burning since last night in the Pogonip, closer to Santa Cruz, and is now contained. Paradise Park has been evacuated. Highway 9 is closed between here and there. Sirens announce the arrivals and departures of firetrucks as they migrate into town from the south on Highway 9, and back south toward Santa Cruz on Graham Hill Road and Mount Hermon Road, as if even they can not get through on Highway 9. Heavy helicopters can be heard but not seen off to the south. A cumbersome airplane is circling the area.
There is not much of a breeze. It seems as if it has not gotten as warm as predicted for today. The smoke and sirens sets the mood. It is not good, even though we know that the fire is contained.
Fire is part of life here. Clear cut harvesting of redwood more than a century ago allowed more combustible specie to proliferate over the area and among the redwoods as they recover and regenerate. The forest is now more combustible than it has ever been, but can not be allowed to burn with so many of us living here. Without burning, it becomes more combustible.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 12 Comments

Trees Hate Cars

P71028That is a myth. They do not hate all cars. They just hate particular cars.
I did an internship with arborists in the summer of 1988, and have never been able to get away from arboriculture. Even as a nurseryman, I still sometimes work for arborists, and inspect trees that they are concerned with. I have seen many of their subject trees that have fallen onto parked cars, homes and whatever trees fall onto. I have noticed particular patterns.
Trees are more careful with Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Chrysler, Volkswagen, Mercedes Benz, and Datsun or Nissan. I have seen them put considerable effort into avoiding these cars when dropping limbs or falling over. When I was in school in San Luis Obispo, I drove my neighbor’s 1969 Oldsmobile Cutlass out from under his Chinese elm that fell over it. The tree held itself up on limbs that landed on the opposite side of the driveway so that the car came out from under it completely unharmed. When I lived in town in Los Gatos, a massive coast live oak two doors down fell harmlessly into the front yard next door. The roots pulled up in front of and behind a Volkswagen GTI that was parked at the curb, and barely tossed an ounce or two of mud onto the hood. A few big olive trees did the same at a large condominium complex in San Jose during a windy storm, leaving nothing more than a bunch of leaves and olives on top of a classic Mercedes Benz sedan and an old Datsun B210. These are certainly not the only examples. This seems to be a common theme for these particular cars.
I can not say the same for Mercury, Plymouth, Jeep, Cadillac, Mazda, Toyota, Lexus, Honda, Subaru, Infinity or Volvo. I have never seen trees damage or avoid damaging them.
Damage to Ford, Dodge, Audi, Isuzu and BMW did not see to be targeted. It was the sort of random damage that one would expect from a tree innocently falling onto parked cars.
Both of the only two cars that I know of that were squashed while being driven were Lincoln Navigators. That is not a good statistic at all. One was hit by a falling Canary Island pine in Fremont. The other was clobbered by a Coast live oak in Saratoga. No one was hurt; but the cars were killed.
I have seen only one Chevrolet damaged by a tree, but it was vicious! It was one of only three coastal redwood trees in a landscape situation that I had ever seen fall, although ‘fall’ does not adequately describe what this tree did. Without enough wind to damage adjacent and notoriously structurally deficient California pepper and Chinese elm trees, this redwood seemed to jump out of the ground to land on top of an Astro Van about twenty feet away! I do not think the tree was targeting it because it was a Chevrolet. The tree obviously hated this specific Astro Van VERY much.
Acura seems to be the second most hated sort of car among trees. They are less common than Honda, but I have never seen a Honda damaged by a tree that it did not run into first. Yet, I have seen at least three Acuras destroyed by a coast live oak, a blue gum eucalyptus and a Monterey pine. That is an inordinate number!
The car that trees seem to hate most is Porsche! They are uncommon cars, and are probably less common than any other car that I have ever seen damaged or destroyed by trees. Yet, I have probably seen more of them destroyed than Acuras, including one that was attacked as blatantly as the Astro Van was attacked by the small redwood. The ONLY blue spruce that I have ever seen fall landed squarely down the middle of a new Cayenne, back when they were the first SUV that Porsche made. The densely foliated canopy enveloped the car so thoroughly that only the middle of the tailgate was visible.
It would be interesting to know if insurance companies have determined if any particular types of cars are more likely to be damaged or destroyed by trees than any other. I would think that if the trends that I have noticed are accurate, that insurance companies would be aware of them as well. I am also curious to know if other arborists have noticed similar trends.P80106

Posted on by tonytomeo · 17 Comments

Neither Here Nor There

P81103KIs it coming or going? Autumn that is. It normally gets here last. We are typically only beginning to see the first foliar color of autumn while other parts of America get their first snow. We typically get a few more tomatoes out of our vegetable gardens long after most everyone else has pulled out their frosted tomato plants.
Well, we still got it. Tomatoes that is. The plant that produces these bright orange cherry tomatoes is looking a bit tired and pale, but the tomatoes are as good as ever. It probably will not last until frost. The plant might get pulled out when the tomatoes run out. Without bloom, that could be pretty soon. Frost does not happen until well into winter. Regardless, tired tomato plants say that autumn is coming.
We got foliar color too. This Japanese maple turned this nice garnet red quite some time ago. Sweetgum trees all over town are also well colored. They seem to be ahead of schedule, as if winter is on the way. Defoliating black oak trees say that autumn is going.
While the days are still pleasantly warm, with temperatures into the 80s, the nights get cool enough to color deciduous foliage. Warm days are quite normal for this time of year. So are cool nights. However, the two typically do not happen together for more than a few days. Warm days typically alternate with mild nights. Cool nights typically alternate with cool days.
Well, even in our mild climate, the weather is always full of surprises. We will enjoy it while it lasts. Autumn has always been a mere in-between season anyway. In the chaparral and desert climates of California, winter and the rain that comes with it will be welcome when they arrive.P81103K+

Posted on by tonytomeo · 27 Comments

Six on Saturday: Dia De Los Muertos

 

Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, was yesterday, Friday, November 2. However, the dead are still dead. They don’t need a special day to be so. In fact, they do it every day of the year. Dia de los Muertos is just one day of celebration to honor them.

Dia de los Muertos is not for plants though. Dead plants just get cut down and disposed of. Some get composted. Dead trees get recycled into firewood. These are six pictures of five species of dead plants that I needed to contend with in the week before last.

1. Rhododendron. I really do not know what killed this group of rhododendrons. It is not uncommon for one to die. With all the rhododendrons in the landscape here, a few dead ones get removed annually. However, it is rather disconcerting that a few died all in the same area at the same time. All their dead stems were rather sculptural. They were removed just after this picture was taken. Of the five specie in these six pictures, this is the only species that is not native.P81103

2. Madrone. Bits and pieces of madrone commonly succumb to blight, sort of like fireblight in apple and pear trees. Sometimes, entire trees are killed like this one. It is fire wood now.P81103+

3. Ponderosa pine. The forest does not burn as frequently as it used to before people were here to extinguish forest fires. The lack of restorative fires interferes with regional ecology. Not only is the forest becoming congested with unburned fuel, but pathogens are proliferating in the aging flora and consequently accelerating the deterioration of the forest, which increases the combustibility. It is a natural process designed to correct an unnatural lack of restorative fires, but does not go well for those of us who live here. Ponderosa pines can live for a few centuries. However, in our compromised ecosystem, many succumb to pathogens while still relatively young. This one will need to be removed next year. Once dead, they deteriorate and start to drop limbs within the year.P81103++

4. Coast live oak. This is one of the most adaptable of tree specie in California. It lives right down to the beach, and into interior valleys, and up the summit of the Santa Cruz Mountains. It does what it must to adapt to the various environments within its range. It often lives in groves of the same, where it is more likely to burn every few decades or so. In spacious valleys, it is often not so social, with individual trees living in relative isolation from their neighbors. Grass fires can burn harmlessly between such trees, allowing them to live for a few centuries. Wherever they are, they develop more trunks than they need. As they mature, subordinating trunks like this one, get shed naturally and harmlessly. It is not as bad as it looks. In the wild, it would rot and fall to the ground as the rest of the tree continues on as if nothing happened. In our landscape, it was cut and taken away.P81103+++

5. Coast live oak. This dead foliage is a bit more alarming because I do not know what caused it. It is probably superficial damage caused by a girdling beetle. I did not look for evidence. Sudden Oak Death Syndrome is a much more serious disease that is all too common here (and a very sensitive subject). Fortunately, this particular specimen is a small and unimportant tree that I would not mind cutting down if it were to succumb. I just do not like to be reminded of how rampant Sudden Oak Death Syndrome is here.P81103++++

6. Tan oak. This tree really did succumb to Sudden Oak Death Syndrome, Phytophthora ramorum, which is more commonly known here as SODS or SOD. A few adjacent tan oaks that succumbed last year are already very deteriorated and will soon be dropping limbs if not removed over winter. These particular trees are not very important to the surrounding forest. Their removal will actually improve the collective landscape, and give the surrounding redwoods more space to expand. The problem with SOD is that we never know which oaks it will kill next. It kills trees before we know they are infected. There is no remedy.P81103+++++

This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate:

https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/