Never give up on an oak!

[LittleDingus]

For as finicky as they can be to transplant, an established oak can be hard to kill!

Case in point:

This is a cork oak that was 3 years from acorn when it got forgotten about and froze over the winter.



It's looked like this since January when it saw sub 0F temps for many days in a row. Suber is quoted as hardy to zone 7 should be kept out of freezing temps.

The leaves fried and are hard to pull off. Many of the branches look desiccated.



This was a tree many, myself included, would have tossed on the compost heap months ago!

And yet...it lives!



Lots of live buds all over the main trunk!

I trimmed off all the desiccated branches to get it back to this



I purposely left long nubs for now so as not to risk any live buds near them.

I had 5 bags of cork oak that all got hit this same way. They should have been left in Kansas City but I ended up chopping all but this one and tossing them on the truck to Illinois. Once unpacked in Illinois, they went through another week or two of sub 0F temps followed by a lot of cold rainy weather. In the 5 bags were 12 oaks. Of the 12, 8 are showing new growth now.

Amazing!


Anyone else with similar oak from the dead stories??

 

[LittleDingus]

Anyone else with similar oak from the dead stories??

I do have another one...no pictured though

My daughter back when she was in 3rd grade got an oak in a tube for arbor day from school. One of these foot long whips in a plastic tube they hand out to help you feel good about saving the planet. It wasn't labeled with anything more than "oak". I'm pretty sure it was a burr oak though.

We planted hers in a large patio pot where it grew well for 3 years. Then we moved.

It got forgotten about after the move and dried up and "died". Being tucked away as it was on a blind side of the house, it sat forgotten from the time it died through the winter. The next spring, it didn't bud out: dead but still on the blind side of the house and forgotten about.

The next spring was a wetter than normal spring...and the tree budded out just like nothing had ever happened!

It literally sat dormant for a full year and a half...then just woke up!

Never give up on an oak!