Oak seedlings seek the Pines

October 27

October 27, 2013

I have come out this afternoon to get ten seedling oaks out of a purely oak wood, and as many out of a purely pine wood, and then compare them. I look for trees one foot or less in height, and convenient to dig up. I could not find one in the small wood-lot of oak and hickory on the Lee farm, west of hill.  I then searched in the large Woodis Park, the most oaken parts of it, wood some twenty-five or thirty years old, but I found only three.

After searching here more than half an hour I went into the new pitch and white pine lot just southwest, toward the old Lee cellar, and there were thousands of the seedling oaks only a foot high and less, quite reddening the ground now in some places, and these had perfectly good roots.  

I have now examined many dense pine woods, both pitch and white, and several oak woods, and I do not hesitate to say that oak seedlings under one foot high are very much more abundant under the pines than under the oaks. They prevail and are countless under the pines, while they are hard to find under the oaks.

As I am coming out of the white pine wood not far north of railroad I see a jay, screaming at me, fly to a white oak eight or ten rods from the wood in the pasture and directly alight on the ground, pick up an acorn, and fly back into the woods with it. This was one, perhaps the most effectual, way in which pine woods are stocked with the numerous little oaks.

By looking to see what oaks grow in the open land near by or along the edge where the wood is extensively pine, I can tell surely what kinds of oaks I shall find under the pines.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  October 27, 1860 

I have now examined many dense pine woods, both pitch and white, and several oak woods, and I do not hesitate to say that oak seedlings under one foot high are very much more abundant under the pines than under the oaks.See June 3, 1856 (“As I have said before, it seems to me that the squirrels, etc., disperse the acorns, etc., amid the pines, . . . If the pine wood had been surrounded by white oak, probably that would have come up after the pine.”) and The succession of forest trees (“If a pine wood is surrounded by a white-oak one chiefly, white-oaks may be expected to succeed when the pines are cut.”)

Over hill to Woodis Park.

October 6.

As I go over the hill, I see a large flock of crows on the dead white oak and on the ground under the living one.  I find the ground strewn with white oak acorns, and many of these have just been broken in two.

The crow, methinks, is our only large bird that hovers and circles about in flocks in an irregular and straggling manner, filling the air over your head and sporting in it as if at home here. They often burst up above the woods where they were perching, like the black fragments of a powder-mill just exploded.

One crow lingers on a limb of the dead oak till I am within a dozen rods. There is strong and blustering northwest wind, and when it launches off to follow its comrades it is blown up and backward still nearer to me. 

It is obliged to tack four or five times just like a vessel, first to the right, then to the left, before it can get off; for as often as it tries to fly directly forward against the wind, it is blown upward and backward within gunshot, and it only advances directly forward at last by stooping very low within a few feet of the ground where the trees keep off the wind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 6, 1860

A large flock of crows. See September 22, 1860 ("See a large flock of crows.");September 29. September 29, 1854 (" A large flock of crows wandering about and cawing as usual at this season.") See also A Book of the Seasons: The American Crow.

A powder-mill just exploded. See January 7, 1853 ("I smelt the powder half a mile before I got there. Put the different buildings thirty rods apart, and then but one will blow up at a time.”); July 21, 1859 ("The canal is still cluttered with the wreck of the mills that have been blown up in times past.”)