Plant #11: White Oak

yes, it's only been a day and my fern is dying :(

Scientific name : Quercus alba L

Common name     : White Oak

Form of plant   : Tree

Life style      : Perennial

Plant group     : Angiosperm-dicot

Leaf structure  : Simple, rounded tip

                  Short petiole

Leaf arrang.    : Alternate

Fruit name      : Acorn

Fruiting season : Annually

Flower          : Imperfect, monoecious        

Shade tolerance : Yes

I never realized that botany could be so cool and immediately important in our daily life. Before this, I though botany was only good for producing better crop yield, making new hybrid of plant, naming them with weird scientific name and categorizing them into their specific taxa. I even have the active imagination of stereotyping botanist as geeks who (build the greenhouse as their secret lair where they cultivate mutant carnivorous plant near the entrance to keep unwanted people away and) spend their time looking at plants and jotting down some notes. Such a mundane and passive persona. The coolest thing they get is to look at fern plant's sperm cell swimming around through the compound microscope. That is as far as the action gets. But today, I was wronged. Way wrong. Botanist do get a huge piece of the action. I don't know that until I met Professor R Bruce Allison, a leading researcher in tree decay. A superficial introduction of the knowledge: yes, tree does decay. And they do that very similarly to teeth decay. It is due to certain bacteria that invade the tree  forming a cavity inside its trunk. So how is this amazing? Because decayed tree may fall onto the ground any second due to impaired support structure, they are hazardous to surrounding properties and lives. Imagine a decayed oak tree as huge as a two-men-hug stands beside a suburban house or a dense parking lot. Or a summer camp that uses huge decayed elm tree to make swings or tree top obstacle course. Would we know that it is dangerous without the knowledge of tree decay? Or even a ancient tree that had survived until today being made a tourist attraction, a historical monument with sentimental value or a place of worship. Can we possibly begin to convince the local community to amputate the tree without the solid proof through the knowledge of tree decay? I bet no. So botanist got to make the call and chainsaw down many of these bad decaying tree. Like superman taking down bad guys and save lives. So heroic. Cheers to them :D

During Professor Allison's presentation, he showed a photograph of his graduate student inside a decayed tree trunk which they had just amputated in front of a house. The tree was about 3 meters in diameter and the cavity of the decay was about 2 meters in diameter! If you could imagine how that looks like, do you still want to keep that tree standing on your front lawn? :O