CALIFORNIA NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY TREE STUDY KIT

LIVE OAK

• Live oak trees get their names because they look "alive," are not deciduous and are green all year. There are actually two species of live oak in Marin, the coast live oak and the canyon live oak. Children are not asked to distinguish these in the test.
• Acorns were an important staple in the Miwok diet.
• Many native animals rely on acorns. Approximately 170 species of birds use oaks as some point in their life cycle. A scrub jay may cache 5000 acorns in a season! 58 species of lizards, snakes and amphibians are associated with oak habitats. 105 mammals use the oak resource. For example, 35% of the fall diet of deer is acorns. 5000 species of insects use oaks and 1000 are dependent on them.
• Fossil records indicate there have been oaks in California for at least ten million years.
• Oaks woodlands are in trouble in California due to development, dams preventing the floods which reduced the numbers of gophers and other predators of acorns and seedlings, invasion of weeds like French broom which out-compete oak seedlings, and ranching (A cow can eat 1800 acorns a day, not to mention trampling on oak seedlings.)