Birth of an Oak

Andrew Hipp

Published May 2025 in International Oaks No. 36: 11–16

The following is adapted from the first chapter of my book, Oak Origins: From Acorns to Species and the Tree of Life (University of Chicago Press, 2024), illustrated by Rachel D. Davis, with a Foreword by Béatrice Chassé.

The chapter weaves together stories about how individual oaks shuttle pollen across the forest to receptive flowers and con squirrels and jays into planting their acorns where a baby oak might thrive. It forms the foundation for the book as a whole, which explores how oak individuals, species, and lineages – the Tree of Life – shape one another and in turn shape oak communities. I knew very little about oak reproduction and dispersal when I started working on this book, but I knew this was where I wanted to start: for just as “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,” in Theodosius Dobzhansky’s words, so nothing in evolution and ecology makes sense except in the light of natural history. All of oak evolution, stretching back 56 million years or more, comes together in the natural history of individual trees thriving in their forests and savannas.

References

Hardin, J.W. 1975. Hybridization and Introgression in Quercus alba. Journal of the Arnold Arboretum 56: 336-63.

Hipp, A.L., A.T. Whittemore, M. Garner, M. Hahn, E. Fitzek, E. Guichoux, J. Cavender-Bares, P.F. Gugger, P.S. Manos, I.S. Pearse, and C.H. Cannon. 2019. Genomic Identity of White Oak Species in an Eastern North American Syngameon. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 104(3) : 455-477. https://doi.org/10.3417/2019434