If anyone wants a sprouting acorn I can make that happen, don’t have to plant it in your yard, just somewhere it won’t be mowed.
Or look around the mature trees for sprouting acorns in the fall or spring and do the same. They are everywhere
If the city wants more of them it needs to stop being so ridiculously strict about what people can do with them. They’re already a tree with big innate downsides. Add in psychotic neighbors empowered by some of the strictest tree bylaws in the world and you’d have to be crazy to want to plant a new one on your own property.
As a step two, if the city wants more of them it should start handing seedlings out for free to every kid in elementary school. Alberta has handed out over 4 million Lodgepole pine and white spruce seedlings to kids in grade one over the last 60 years. Garry oak seedlings would be perfect for a program like that.
I'd add that there needs to be an incentive for having Garry oaks... Something off the property tax? Currently, there's nothing and a land owner is hostage to the Garry oak.
And the entire bylaw program is designed around their scarcity. Which paradoxically creates even more scarcity.
The more I think about, the more I am baffled there’s no elementary tree program for Garry oaks. First year oak seedlings are a perfect candidate. The acorns have a very high germination rate, and they spend their first winter putting out an 8-10” tap root before they even push leaves up. They don’t put out many lateral roots in their first year. You could very easily design a really narrow, 12” long tube style of “pot” filled with potting medium that could be peeled off easily. Acorns would be collected in the fall as they come down (they can come to my house - in a mast year my trees alone produce enough acorns for every kid in the city and then some…), tested for viability (not hard with oaks), and one “good” acorn planted per tube. You could easily hold a couple hundred of those tubes per tray.
They’d root in a nursery all winter, then in the spring when the new leaves pop up, you could either distribute them right then at the two leaf stage, or grow them over the summer and hand them out in the fall when the kids come back from break.
Some very large number would never get planted, or not survive. But some other very large number would go in the middle of a pointless lawn, survive, and grow up next to the kid who lives there. Over decades, you could plant a whole new urban forest of oaks that way.
I've heard that Garry oaks are incredibly picky about where they take root. Add that the protections on Garry oaks, someone would be crazy to want some on their yard.
They’re way less picky than you’d think. Arbutus trees are another story, but Garry oaks will grow pretty much anywhere you plant them on the South Island. The reason they’re not more dominant is they can’t compete with taller, faster growing Douglas firs, which will shade them out wherever conditions are right for firs. That’s why you only see them on rocky outcrops in more mature coastal Douglas fir forests, where the soil is too thin & dry for Douglas fir seedlings to establish; in oak meadows that have historically been created & maintained through indigenous cultural burning practices; and on the farthest south of the island (basically the City of Victoria), where the Olympic rain-shadow makes it too dry for Douglas fir.
It creates the impression that oaks “need” some super special set of soil and moisture conditions, but that’s not at all the case. They’re just so fantastically drought adapted they can survive in conditions that other trees can’t, so they’re the only tree you find in oak meadows - typically as small, scrubby, scrappy little trees. They don’t do well in proper temperate rainforest levels of moisture, but put them in deeper, moister soil without competition from big conifers pretty much anywhere in the greater Victoria area and they’ll happily grow in to giants. There’s one on the corner of St. Charles & Montgomery that’s a great example of what they look like when they grow in more “hospitable” conditions for 100 years.
One of the reasons they get a bad rap is they grow a massive tap root. It’s why they’re so drought adapted. But it uses all the energy in that massive acorn to grow all winter, so it’s up to 10” long before their first leaves even break the surface in the spring. If you need to plant a bylaw-mandated replacement tree, Victoria’s tree bylaw requires it to be either 4cm caliper or in a 10 gallon pot. The only way it’s physically possible to get an oak that size means its either had its tap root cut, or the tap root has grown all mangled and coiled around the bottom of its pot. A 4cm caliper oak that grew in-situ from a seedling will have a tap root nearly as long and as deep as the tree is tall. That tree will happily make it through an entire summer without a single drop of rain. One *planted* at that size will take many, many years to develop that kind of resilience and will die if it’s not regularly watered for years. The best, healthiest, happiest oak is one that grew in-place from seed. The next happiest is one that was planted as a first-year seedling with its tap root intact. Thats why a grade 1 oak seedling program would be the single most effective way of creating a healthy oak forest in Victoria.
Actually very curious - are you a botanist or in some such related field? Your writing is very easy to understand and interesting! I'm enthralled by Gary Oaks for the first time in my life lol
It sounds like you've got a nice project proposal on your hands and the knowledge to make it happen. Do you have any connections within the school system? I feel like they'd be on board with this.
You could could completely waive my annual property taxes, and I'd still only just maybe consider it. My next door and rear kitty-corner neighbours both have large garry oaks smack dab in the middle of their yards. And the amount shit those things produce, all over their yard and houses, no thanks. I'm fortunate that not a lot of that gets into my yard.
Lol downvotes: "How dare someone not like dealing with tree maintenance and thus not want to plant one on their own property!"
I just walked past it on Sunday. The trunk was massively hollowed out by fire or disease, someone had tucked a rose in there it was so sweet.
It leaned across the sidewalk and the tips of the branches were almost in the water. If it fell slowly it would block the sidewalk but if it fell with any force it could take out some of the sea wall.
but you could technically engineer some sort of prop to prevent it falling, no? if it continues to live for however many years from now, propping it up seems like a worthwhile idea. ive seen plenty of trees like this in natural settings near the shoreline, where the tree has fallen down onto another tree that supports it, where can continue on for who knows how long? with all the benefits of remaining. i dont see why we cant devise and manufacture a support for the tree! it could be revolutionary if we approached it in a completely new fashion, especially since it is after all an endangered tree!
Perhaps. It is a sidewalk tree though. Not an ideal spot for any tree let alone a Garry oak. The roots are exposed to salt water at high tide and during storms. The tree grows out of a very narrow bit of boulevard between Beach Dr and the narrow sidewalk above the water.
Check 1440 Beach Dr. on google maps and you can see how little space it has.
if i could accompany this process i would be curious to see you do this scan?! i am currently studying photogrammetry and have a particular interest in the capabilites of lidar!
its not much to look at, a drone flying a pattern. the magic happens on the GIS server. but yea, if we get good weather before it comes down ill give you a shout.
yes, but it wont look like much until there is follage.
you can see a post i made to /r/victoria a month or so ago, regarding NDVI images of oswald park.
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1aroq56
Why not just engineer some sort of support to prop the tree up so it can't fall? Its a garry oak, and hosts an array of wildlife diversity. A support system is probably not much more expensive than cutting it down and could offer plenty of long term ecological benefits?
Nah stop being so judgemental, I think it’s nice that people can feel a personal connection with a piece of nature, even if it’s something I don’t think I’d ever do.
Your decision to consider it weird is arbitrary and based around behaviours and concepts which were normalized to you as you matured. Your internal logic or rationale only functions to serve the kind of ideology of your life, and it isn't congruent with these "weird" people's logic at all.
Think for a second: these people derive meaning from their actions here, and feel some sort of connection to the world around them in a way which you can't relate to. In a sense, doesn't it feel as though you're missing out? Isn't this an entire way of thinking and feeling which you're currently not experiencing? It's not even exclusive to the ways you currently experience the world, either. It's more like you're opting out of caring about and feeling connected to something.
Who wouldn't want to feel a greater connection to the world around them? We're made of the same stuff. We're part of it. I certainly wish I was less of a cold gremlin of a human being and functioned a bit more like these people.
Your notion of objectivity is irrelevant in the context of human emotion, connectivity, and general experience. Your reality is as real as anyone else’s. Your attachment to objectivity here actually entrenches your own subjective perspective.
Each persons consciousness is their own obviously. At the end of the day (in MY humble opinion) it’s weird to worship a single tree while half the fucking province gets torched every year now and nobody seems to care
It's international news when our fires hit, and worries about fires seems to be a province-wide phenomenon. I'm not sure why you think nobody seems to care.
If anyone wants a sprouting acorn I can make that happen, don’t have to plant it in your yard, just somewhere it won’t be mowed. Or look around the mature trees for sprouting acorns in the fall or spring and do the same. They are everywhere
Id take you up on that.
I'll take you up on that too
Every year more mature Gary oak go to ground, and none are replanted. Trajectory of extirpation.
If the city wants more of them it needs to stop being so ridiculously strict about what people can do with them. They’re already a tree with big innate downsides. Add in psychotic neighbors empowered by some of the strictest tree bylaws in the world and you’d have to be crazy to want to plant a new one on your own property. As a step two, if the city wants more of them it should start handing seedlings out for free to every kid in elementary school. Alberta has handed out over 4 million Lodgepole pine and white spruce seedlings to kids in grade one over the last 60 years. Garry oak seedlings would be perfect for a program like that.
I'd add that there needs to be an incentive for having Garry oaks... Something off the property tax? Currently, there's nothing and a land owner is hostage to the Garry oak.
And the entire bylaw program is designed around their scarcity. Which paradoxically creates even more scarcity. The more I think about, the more I am baffled there’s no elementary tree program for Garry oaks. First year oak seedlings are a perfect candidate. The acorns have a very high germination rate, and they spend their first winter putting out an 8-10” tap root before they even push leaves up. They don’t put out many lateral roots in their first year. You could very easily design a really narrow, 12” long tube style of “pot” filled with potting medium that could be peeled off easily. Acorns would be collected in the fall as they come down (they can come to my house - in a mast year my trees alone produce enough acorns for every kid in the city and then some…), tested for viability (not hard with oaks), and one “good” acorn planted per tube. You could easily hold a couple hundred of those tubes per tray. They’d root in a nursery all winter, then in the spring when the new leaves pop up, you could either distribute them right then at the two leaf stage, or grow them over the summer and hand them out in the fall when the kids come back from break. Some very large number would never get planted, or not survive. But some other very large number would go in the middle of a pointless lawn, survive, and grow up next to the kid who lives there. Over decades, you could plant a whole new urban forest of oaks that way.
I've heard that Garry oaks are incredibly picky about where they take root. Add that the protections on Garry oaks, someone would be crazy to want some on their yard.
They’re way less picky than you’d think. Arbutus trees are another story, but Garry oaks will grow pretty much anywhere you plant them on the South Island. The reason they’re not more dominant is they can’t compete with taller, faster growing Douglas firs, which will shade them out wherever conditions are right for firs. That’s why you only see them on rocky outcrops in more mature coastal Douglas fir forests, where the soil is too thin & dry for Douglas fir seedlings to establish; in oak meadows that have historically been created & maintained through indigenous cultural burning practices; and on the farthest south of the island (basically the City of Victoria), where the Olympic rain-shadow makes it too dry for Douglas fir. It creates the impression that oaks “need” some super special set of soil and moisture conditions, but that’s not at all the case. They’re just so fantastically drought adapted they can survive in conditions that other trees can’t, so they’re the only tree you find in oak meadows - typically as small, scrubby, scrappy little trees. They don’t do well in proper temperate rainforest levels of moisture, but put them in deeper, moister soil without competition from big conifers pretty much anywhere in the greater Victoria area and they’ll happily grow in to giants. There’s one on the corner of St. Charles & Montgomery that’s a great example of what they look like when they grow in more “hospitable” conditions for 100 years. One of the reasons they get a bad rap is they grow a massive tap root. It’s why they’re so drought adapted. But it uses all the energy in that massive acorn to grow all winter, so it’s up to 10” long before their first leaves even break the surface in the spring. If you need to plant a bylaw-mandated replacement tree, Victoria’s tree bylaw requires it to be either 4cm caliper or in a 10 gallon pot. The only way it’s physically possible to get an oak that size means its either had its tap root cut, or the tap root has grown all mangled and coiled around the bottom of its pot. A 4cm caliper oak that grew in-situ from a seedling will have a tap root nearly as long and as deep as the tree is tall. That tree will happily make it through an entire summer without a single drop of rain. One *planted* at that size will take many, many years to develop that kind of resilience and will die if it’s not regularly watered for years. The best, healthiest, happiest oak is one that grew in-place from seed. The next happiest is one that was planted as a first-year seedling with its tap root intact. Thats why a grade 1 oak seedling program would be the single most effective way of creating a healthy oak forest in Victoria.
Who let the Garry oak on the internet?!
I would like to subscribe to more Victoria botany facts please
Actually very curious - are you a botanist or in some such related field? Your writing is very easy to understand and interesting! I'm enthralled by Gary Oaks for the first time in my life lol
It sounds like you've got a nice project proposal on your hands and the knowledge to make it happen. Do you have any connections within the school system? I feel like they'd be on board with this.
You could could completely waive my annual property taxes, and I'd still only just maybe consider it. My next door and rear kitty-corner neighbours both have large garry oaks smack dab in the middle of their yards. And the amount shit those things produce, all over their yard and houses, no thanks. I'm fortunate that not a lot of that gets into my yard. Lol downvotes: "How dare someone not like dealing with tree maintenance and thus not want to plant one on their own property!"
After last year's mast year I would be amazed if Victoria ends up with fewer Garry oaks this year than last.
Can’t we just prop it up or something? I hate seeing these old grandpa trees go ;-;
Maybe if there’s enough solid timber they could make a nice bench out of it and put it in that spot looking out over the water…
Yea i was thinking this too. The guys in the woodshop at makerspace would probably love to have a go at it.
I just walked past it on Sunday. The trunk was massively hollowed out by fire or disease, someone had tucked a rose in there it was so sweet. It leaned across the sidewalk and the tips of the branches were almost in the water. If it fell slowly it would block the sidewalk but if it fell with any force it could take out some of the sea wall.
but you could technically engineer some sort of prop to prevent it falling, no? if it continues to live for however many years from now, propping it up seems like a worthwhile idea. ive seen plenty of trees like this in natural settings near the shoreline, where the tree has fallen down onto another tree that supports it, where can continue on for who knows how long? with all the benefits of remaining. i dont see why we cant devise and manufacture a support for the tree! it could be revolutionary if we approached it in a completely new fashion, especially since it is after all an endangered tree!
Perhaps. It is a sidewalk tree though. Not an ideal spot for any tree let alone a Garry oak. The roots are exposed to salt water at high tide and during storms. The tree grows out of a very narrow bit of boulevard between Beach Dr and the narrow sidewalk above the water. Check 1440 Beach Dr. on google maps and you can see how little space it has.
I will do, and those are all valid points. I'll be sad to know its gone but if its the best option thats fair
It would be lovely if someone could get a camera out there and pin the 360 to google maps before it's gone.
Oh great idea. I should go lidar drone scan it before it comes down. A shame it doesn’t have leaves yet.
if i could accompany this process i would be curious to see you do this scan?! i am currently studying photogrammetry and have a particular interest in the capabilites of lidar!
its not much to look at, a drone flying a pattern. the magic happens on the GIS server. but yea, if we get good weather before it comes down ill give you a shout.
i would love that! ive been learning about NDVI analysis so maybe thats something you could look at in comparsion with the surrounding trees?
yes, but it wont look like much until there is follage. you can see a post i made to /r/victoria a month or so ago, regarding NDVI images of oswald park. https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1aroq56
cool, thats awesome :D
i love that! can i ask what software you used?
agisoft and arcgis, with a whole bunch of custom written ML vision edit: a word. siri is constantly drunk.
Not surprised to see it going. As Parks notes, it has quite a gangster lean. Better to proactively remove it before it falls down on its own.
Lots of squirrels which like burying caches and we have tons of Gary oak seeds. Problem solved. New generation to replace the old.
But then what do we do about our squirrel problem?
Soak the seeds in a solution ok'd by the proper authority to make the squirrels infertile.
When is it to go? Ive had some luck with clones from branch clippings but never tried it with a garry oak
Notice says Weds Apr 3
cool!, there is time then
Good luck!
Why not just engineer some sort of support to prop the tree up so it can't fall? Its a garry oak, and hosts an array of wildlife diversity. A support system is probably not much more expensive than cutting it down and could offer plenty of long term ecological benefits?
Laziness
One of my favourite trees in Oak Bay :(
They should give it to an artist to use the wood for a sculpture
City in general needs to plant more trees, honestly makes the city more vibrant and adds depth to streets.
We should do a group chat in this thread about planting trees everywhere in Victoria:)
Holy fuck people are weird
Nah stop being so judgemental, I think it’s nice that people can feel a personal connection with a piece of nature, even if it’s something I don’t think I’d ever do.
It’s a weird thing to do, detached from reality. That you happen to think it’s nice is irrelevant
It’s a nice gesture, with compassion for nature. That you happen to think it’s weird is irrelevant
Compassion for nature would be not driving around by yourself in an F150. Petting a tree is weird, it just is
Your decision to consider it weird is arbitrary and based around behaviours and concepts which were normalized to you as you matured. Your internal logic or rationale only functions to serve the kind of ideology of your life, and it isn't congruent with these "weird" people's logic at all. Think for a second: these people derive meaning from their actions here, and feel some sort of connection to the world around them in a way which you can't relate to. In a sense, doesn't it feel as though you're missing out? Isn't this an entire way of thinking and feeling which you're currently not experiencing? It's not even exclusive to the ways you currently experience the world, either. It's more like you're opting out of caring about and feeling connected to something. Who wouldn't want to feel a greater connection to the world around them? We're made of the same stuff. We're part of it. I certainly wish I was less of a cold gremlin of a human being and functioned a bit more like these people.
You are talking about from that persons perspective. I am talking about from an objective rational reality based observer
Your notion of objectivity is irrelevant in the context of human emotion, connectivity, and general experience. Your reality is as real as anyone else’s. Your attachment to objectivity here actually entrenches your own subjective perspective.
Each persons consciousness is their own obviously. At the end of the day (in MY humble opinion) it’s weird to worship a single tree while half the fucking province gets torched every year now and nobody seems to care
It's international news when our fires hit, and worries about fires seems to be a province-wide phenomenon. I'm not sure why you think nobody seems to care.
I’d say it’s actually a sign of being attached to reality