365 Urban Species. #317: Swamp White Oak. #318: Bur Oak.

[urbpan]

Photos by urbpan. Location: the Riverway, Boston
Urban species #317: Swamp white oak Quercus bicolor


Location: Lawrence Schoolyard, Brookline.
Urban species #318: Bur oak Quercus macrocarpa

I know of at least two monumental swamp white oaks in the city. One looms next to Sever Hall on Harvard Yard in Cambridge. The other is pictured here, a broad and spreading mature tree at the end of the Riverway, across from Landmark center. This tree is probably about mid way through its 300 year life span. Swamp white oaks are fairly tolerant of urban stresses, provided that their roots have room to spread and aren't under the compressed soil of the street. The trees are native to eastern North America, found in low-lying areas near water. They occasionally hybridize with bur oaks.

The bur oak is a "species of special concern" in Massachusetts. It probably was never very common here, being a plant of the central North American plain states. There are a number of bur oaks in Boston and Brookline in schoolyards and city parks, and it may be more numerous as a planted tree than as a wild tree. Bur oak is distinguished by its huge shaggy acorn, which isn't produced until the tree is nearly 40 years old. It's one of the best acorns to eat, less bitter than the red oaks' tannin-laden fruit. The bur oak's leaf is distinctive as well, with large rounded lobes and a deep sinus between lobes near the leaf stem and lobes at the leaf end.



The autumn leaf of the swamp white oak.


The swamp white oak at night.

Comments

[proreality.livejournal.com]

That's so pretty!

[(Anonymous)]

I have read many pages in the journal of Oliver Ames, North Easton shovelmaker, 1779-1863. He was always on the lookout for a good swamp oak out of which to make helves (shafts) for
the water-powered triphammers which pounded out his shovels.
He made it a point of recording when they were put in, and when they wore out. At one point, one of his son sends up a nice trunk of swamp oak that he came across in New Jersey.

Dwight

[shiloho3.livejournal.com]

my Dad was transfered to Mass when he was in the army, and they lived in a 1800's era house behind the shovel factory!

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I have spent more time than I probably should admit studying some of those old houses. Actually, Ames had two or three...or more hammershops going in North Easton. There were the big stone shops in the center of town, the hoe shop, a little to the west, and another one at the end of the Pond which I live on.
During what years was your Dad in North Easton? I didn't move into this area until 1977...but it's home now.
My best recent mini-adventure on our pond was seeing two otters out there playing...or whatever it is they do, diving, surfacing, rolling over etc. about a week ago. I have seen a lot of otter tracks on the ice/snow in the winter, but that is only the 2nd otter sighting I have had in my almost 30 years of living here. The first one was seeing an otter under some clear ice, 15-20 years ago.
Old Oliver built the dam that created this pond, but he never paid much attention to local wildlife, which is actually a lot more prevalent now, than it was then. He would record the depth of the water in the floom of his ponds and how much rain fell in each storm, the weight of the oxen that he "kild" and how many pounds of potatoes they harvested, but the "aesthetic-nature" piece was pretty much missing, at least as far as his journal was concerned.

Dwight

[shiloho3.livejournal.com]

They lived at 34 Main Street- according to what my parents learned from their landlord, the house was built for a superintendent of the factory in 1854. They claimed it was haunted- their pets refused to go in one of the upstairs bedrooms- they heard footsteps on the stairs, etc. etc.
They lived there from 1994-98..
Your town is very nice- I don't blame you for your interest in it's buildings & nature. Otters! The journals sound really interesting.

[proreality.livejournal.com]

Oh wow.
Here in SF, we don't have ANYTHING like it, haha.

That's pretty cool that you know the history.

[brush-rat.livejournal.com]

You're in the homestretch, bro. You're going to make it even without claiming slush is some sort of living creature.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Slush is the dominant organism in the Boston ecosytem from December to March.

[miekec]

I love this tree. Every time I ride by it, it's beautiful, big, colorful. Majestic, almost. Glad to see it featured here, and to know its name.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

That's one of my favorite individual trees in the world. Just a wonderful creature.