Quercus minima (revisited)

Handy definition:  Rhizomes are underground stems, not roots.  Roots grow from  them.

Great oaks from little acorns grow.     Quercus minima is great, although not great big.    About knee takk tall,   the  mini “tree” isn’t as puny as it appears at a glance.   It is hidden mostly underground as a rhizome system. 

Its subterranean tastes tie in with its kinship.   The closest relative to Dwarf Live Oak is Sand Live Oak (Quercus geminata) one of the dominant local scrub oaks. Capable of becoming a midsized tree, Sand Live Oak is most often encountered as a rhizomatous shrub.   It  and its sister Dwarf Live Oak have the leaves fuzzy beneath.  The closest relative of this pair is Southern Live Oak (Quercus virginiana) we all know as ultimately a huge stately  tree.  Southern Live Oak often has root sprouts around the base, these often oddly similar to Dwarf Life Oak.

The species trio forms a progression of decreasing above-ground size and increasing rhizomes.  Southern Live Oak, obviously the biggest, is not very tolerant of fire except for its invulnerable size, its under-canopy conditions, and its ability to resprout from roots.  Does Southern LO have rhizomes?   Big Southern LO don’t, but small shrubby ones can.    That brings us to Sand Live Oak,  ranging size-wise  from trees to small shrubs, and they do have rhizomes.  In the event of fire, Sand LO sprouts anew from its rhizomes.  Sand LO bridges the gap between Southern LO and Dwarf LO.    Rising from a sprawling rhizome system, Dwarf LO  is a sand submarine with little green leafy periscopes with acorns.

Immature acorns seem well protected.

Yes, rhizomes are fire insurance, as many observers keenly point out.    Stipulated, but are flames the whole truth? Oh, the things we don’t know!  Dwarf LO grows in pine woods where burns are risky business, and it grows in scrub where fire is less dire, but where access to water is.    Species in scrub have to drink from quick-dry sand, and/or from deep roots.    Maybe the wandering  Dwarf LO rhizome  system is a dynamic water-gathering network?   

Or maybe a fungus-assisted nutrient network?  Fungal root associates (aka mycorrhizal fungi) help procure soil nutrients, and what better place to need nutritional facilitation than sterile sands?   Oaks in general  are well known for root-fungal symbioses, so is Dwarf LO underground a fungal-food network?

A person could say accurately that fire removes competition so that rhizome species can resurface open space after Armageddon.  Yup, and another way to avoid bad circumstances  is to relocate.   A complex of wandering rhizomes allows for  that—-drop  away here, pop up there whac-a-moleishly.

In short, there’s no doubt of the obvious fact that going underground thwarts fire, cyclones, and meteor strikes.  But  the progression of the three oak sisters toward shrinking aboveground and increasing  belowground also goes hand in hand with decreasing habitat quality in terms of water and nutrition.   Which is more important…defense or infrastructure?