Locomotoring

Blue oaks are native to California and are endemic. Meaning, they should be everywhere in California and be nowhere else. They aren’t as easy to spot as their name would have you think. Blue oak aren’t blue. Describing oak leaves as blueish-green may help when the light is just right. Describing the leaves as leathery doesn’t help in California where most of the vegetation tends to have leathery leaves. I would have to walk around with an acorn+leaf chart to match them. Our most common oaks, are the coastal oak (bristly tips) and the valley oak (have lobes). The valley oak grows tall and has twisted branches and lends a queen like elegance to the landscape. The coastal oak often look like they have fought hard to survive, a sherpa who can keep climbing forever. Blue oaks have been elusive to me in Bay Area preserves and parks. Rangers tell me that most of the existing blue oaks are on private lands.

Last weekend we found ourselves on such a private land, the regenerative Paicines (Pai-seen-us) Ranch. We had gone looking for astrophotography opportunities. During our stay, we learned about their Blue Oak forest and I had to take a look. When you live in California long enough, oaks become as fascinating as the Redwoods. One year, we noticed the coastal oaks in our neighborhood masting (link). I want to find acorn flour so I can make flatbread but I don’t want to start with harvesting acorns even when the trees are masting. This trip, the cottage we stayed at, the Cheese Cottage, was next to a large Valley Oak specimen. The cottage’s patio was high up enough that I was practically sitting in a tree house. It allowed me to notice the oak galls up close.

Here are few photos of the blue oak woodland. I present them in black and white. By the time we explored the woodland, the sun was high up and the shadows were stark. It is the end of summer here and the grasses had turned into straw color. The leaves were covered in dust. If it were spring, the woodland floor would have been covered in blue lupines, and the blue dicks and my photographs would have wanted to reflect all that color.