~ by Jim Eagleman
Field Notes
The Willow Oak I
have always been a lover of trees. I’ m naturally drawn to them and enjoy their presence. I like to confirm the type, noting silhouette, form, and size. If I can’ t identify it right off, the challenge remains with me until I can.
Some, like old friends with familiar faces, are recognized immediately. Habitat and range can help while you rely on tactile characteristics like leaves, bark, and buds.
A newcomer to the scene piqued my curiosity. As a botany professor once claimed when identifying any new item, it’ s“ nature to books, then books back to nature.” She meant for us to first use reference books, keys, and guides to help our inquiry, and then confirm it with a closer look.
This was my recent approach to help identify a large, and unknown to me, tree in our community.
I guess I had parked under this tree and walked by it dozens of times, and drove by it hundreds( probably thousands) of times. It’ s located at the entrance to the Brown County Inn parking lot in Nashville. I must have gazed, too, at this tall, natural landmark for years, particularly each fall with its yellow color and massive size, without questioning its kind.
52 Our Brown County Nov./ Dec. 2022
So, as I was leaving the inn one evening, I took a closer look with an app on my cell phone called Seek. I learned this mystery tree, and a neighboring one just like it, is a willow oak.
With more references at home, I read the willow oak has a range along coastal plains from southern New York to Florida, west to Texas, and north to Illinois in the Mississippi Valley. It is described as“ a handsome tree used widely for street planting in the south,” as the American elm is in the north. The long and slender leaves are“ willow-like” but to me, broader, and not as long and skinny as willow leaves. The willow oak leaves are glossy, have an entire margin with no curves or indentations and, true to its membership in the red oak group, possess a“ bristle tip,” a tiny extension of the midrib vein past the terminal end. The willow oak has no relation to the willows, but they may have a preference to soak up water in a similar fashion, since they thrive near streams and floodplains.
Other references term the oak a“ large, long-lived and fast-growing deciduous tree,” and it develops a fairly short trunk when grown in the open. Quercus phellos, its scientific name, and the species name phellos loosely translates to“ water plant.” These facts and others helped me further, and with a quick look at Deam’ s Flora of Indiana, a big, thick book termed,“ the naturalist’ s bible.”
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