Oak-Kay D’Oak-Kay!

Not too long ago, Susan, Ranger and I did a hike up the Beaudry fireroad in the Verdugo Mountains, and while Ranger came away from the excursion with a tick next to her eye, I came away parasite-free and with a random acorn from the trail that I picked up with the intent to plant.

It has since risen to a seedling:

It was doing very well in the biodegradable seed cup I had buried it in (and was quickly outgrowing), and I can only cross my fingers and hope I didn’t do it any damage when I carefully extricated it and replanted it in a bigger pot with some fresher soil, as shown above.

I’m certainly nothing more than an armchair botanicationalist, and thus initially doubted it was any sort of oak since it wasn’t bearing the traditional oak leaf shape, but upon googling “acorn seedling” I eventually wound up at a nice web page sporting images of a Live Oak baby that looked remarkably like this one.

In case you weren’t aware, Live Oaks can live a loooooooong time, such as the one in Encino I wrote about 20 years ago that was determined to be more than 1,000 years old. Read and see all about it here.