Roderick Cameron's blog

An Ansel Adams photograph is featured on a postage stamp.

A beautiful and sonorous name has sunk into synonymy.

Santiago Reyna has selected a bushy holm oak with attractive maroon-burgundy leaves.

We all know the best you can do with an acorn (turn it into an oak), but what can we do with a cupule? One answer is: whistle! It is a good skill to learn. If you are ever lost in the woods, you can use it to emit a shrill call for help or to whistle a happy tune so that no one knows you are afraid. In some regions of the world there seems to have been a long tradition of acorn-cap whistling, particularly among Spanish goatherds. In Mexico, too, children are known to use acorns for whistling.

A new stamp issued by the United States Post Office in August 2023 depicts an oak, though not in a form that most quercophiles would recognize.

Shakespeare mentions oaks more than any other tree.

Tim Boland brought to our attention an interesting discussion of dispersal of acorns by Blue Jays (Cyanocitta cristata). The presentation was hosted by the Association of Field Ornithologists (AFO) and sponsored and is part of AFO Café, a series of informal science conversations about birds, their habitats, and field biology, with a short update on AFO’s programs. 

A proposal to conserve the name for Hungarian oak