"These are a few of my favorite trees..." Oak ( Quercus sp.) Any old oaks are amazing to me. The first time you realize a large oak may be over a hundred years old, the resilience and vast age of these trees will change the way you look at them forever. Oaks are renowned for their strength and longevity. Whole cultures have been built around sacred oak trees; in a similar way, whole ecosystems revolve around single huge oak trees - oaks support more species than any other tree in North America. While people are familiar with white oak (rounded lobes) and red oak (pointed lobes), there are many different varieties of oaks: bur oak, pin oak, bear oak, turkey oak, live oak, and swamp oak, just to name a few. Because of crossbreeding, it can be really difficult to tell oaks apart - as an ecology graduate once told me, "Oaks like to have a lot of sex". This is why I don't sweat the classification much. I'd rather admire an individual oak tree than try to parse
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