From Big Sur to Brookings, entire groves have browned and fallen. Single snags stand in forests like wisps of smoke, like ghosts.
Sudden Oak Death is old news now - but how does news of a plague become old? The beautiful tree is dying, and eventually it will be gone. With its loss, the entire balance of our Pacific coastal forests will change.
There is a reason the Kashaya-Pomo called the tan oak Chishkale, or "beautiful tree". Its copious harvest of acorns was one of the most prolific and reliable food sources around. The Kashaya soaked and beat the nuts into breads and cakes, gruel and soup. During a flu, acorns were sucked like a cough drop, and the tannins were said to soothe the throat. Strung acorns were twirled in the air to make music.
Chishkale has been a generous neighbor to humans and non-humans alike. Northern flying squirrels, dusky footed woodrats and black salamanders are just a few of the myriad creatures that call its root and limbs home. Tan oak's bitter nuts are a staple food for deer, squirrels, woodpeckers and jays. They were a favorite snack for grizzlies, before the bears were driven from the state. And when feral pigs arrived, acorns became a rooting prize for the hogs as well. Other creatures eat the creatures that eat the acorns, and when fruit and flesh decay, still more creatures dine on that.
The tan oak's nutrient-packed nuts are a key fuel driving the engine of the ecosystem here in the coastal hills where it lives. Without them the engine will falter-and then, because nature eternally adapts, it will change. But something precious will be gone for good.
So, if you aren't from around here, go outside now. Go and spend time with the tanoaks while groves still live. While they still stand in crowds and pairs and sometimes singly amongst other trees on a hillside.
Ideally, do this in late summer, when the acorns have fallen and you can see how thick they are on the ground. Find somewhere that the trees grow closely. In places the acorns crunch under your feet like gravel. Notice how dark green the leaves are: serrated like a bread knife, with undersides coated with a soft beige fuzz.
Leave the trail; you are on a brown carpet of those fallen leaves. The air smells uniquely dusty and a little soft, like the leaf-fuzz you saw. Sunlight filters down in small shifting patches, and squirrels and jays chatter and call. You may notice that the sound these particular branches make in the wind is like all branches in all wind, and also like no other branches on the planet. If it is a warm day maybe you will want to find a nice tree, an old one with a broad trunk, and take a nap at its base. When you wake up, you may think of how long your companion has been in this spot, of what it has stood witness to. And remember that soon it-and all of its kin-will be leaving.
References:
Forest legacies, climate change, altered disturbance regimes, invasive species and water.
Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, UC Merced.
Native plants associated with Sudden Oak Death and their use by California Indians: Fact Sheet #6.
Sudden Oak Death: endangering California and Oregon ecosystems.
USDA NRCS national plant data center plant guide.
