Surprises in Oaks in Winter

Our most recent walk in the woods with Emily Oakley and Joe Marcoux, who work with the Ancient Cross Timbers Consortium had some unexpected revelations.

Amazingly, most of these insights are not only seen through the eyes of ecological experts, but are available to us all—with a little closer observation.

For instance, did you know that many of our old trees are hollow inside…and that is ok? As we were doing a core sample of one tree, the drill hit a void and Joe explained that only the outer inch or so is actually alive in an old tree. The inner layers are like a hard skeleton that only supports the tree. By the way, as you can see, the tree rings in the core sample are so tiny that magnification is required to read them accurately, but we estimate some of our trees are hundreds of years old, even pre-dating the Declaration of Independence! Here’s a recent interview with Joe.

If you’d like to join us on future forest expeditions, please let us know by filling out the form below. We’d love to see you!

Emily will be in our woods again this Sunday, December 17 — we’ll meet at the clubhouse at 1pm.