Last December I gave a talk at the Santa Cruz Public Library on “Living With Fire”. One of the participants asked me to apply the fire mimicry treatments I described on their oaks in Boulder Creek, CA. Here are the results after one year. Note that some of the oaks were diseased, including one that did not survive. Otherwise, most of the oaks are showing a positive response to the treatments.
As most of my clients chose to have me treat all of their oaks with fire mimicry, I don’t often get the chance to compare treated vs. untreated oaks in the same landscape setting. However, last year a client had me treat come oaks, but not the others. Here are the before-and-after photos of two oaks that were treated (above), compared to another that was not treated (below). One of the above oaks (Case No. 20181203.2) was infected with a stem canker disease (probably Sudden Oak Death), which was surgically removed in 2018.
In late February of this year a severe wind storm hit the coast of Big Sur and damaged many trees, including a large grove of coast live oaks I began treating with fire mimicry last year. I re-photographed many of the oaks at the time and could clearly see the loss of leaves in the oak canopies, compared to last fall. The photo sets above show how heavily some of the oaks were damaged.
The photos below show how these and many other oaks that sustained damage in the February storm recovered in just 8 months! Most are looking even healthier than they appeared last fall. It may well be that fire mimicry treatments have aided in the recovery of these oaks.
Five years ago I began fire mimicry treatments on a grove of ancient, Indian-era coast live oaks that have clear signs of being culturally modified (ie. pollarded). This past week I checked on the status of these oaks and the entire grove continues to show strong improvement in canopy density and greenness. And in an area of rapidly spreading Sudden Oak Death, none of these trees have contracted this disease.
Last year I began fire mimicry treatments on a large grove of ancient coast live oaks in Big Sur. Many of these oaks were culturally modified several hundred years ago by the Esselen Indians. Several of the largest oaks have clear signs of being pollarded, as shown in the photo below.
Culturally modified coast live oak in Big Sur, CA.
I’m seeing very encouraging results from the surgical procedures I have been performing on oaks with stem canker infections. Here is a sequence of steps. The above photo is of a recent (less than one year) stem canker infection, possibly Sudden Oak Death, of a young coast live oak. The next step is to remove the infected tissue using a hand axe. The photo below shows a partial state of canker removal.
The next photo shows the infected canker tissue entirely removed.
in 2015 I began applying fire mimicry treatments to a grove of sick coast live oaks. Yesterday I checked on their status. Here are the photographic comparisons showing that the density and greenness of the oak canopies has increased noticeably after four years of treatments. However, two severely diseased oaks did not respond to the treatments during this period and had to be removed. Fortunately, the remaining oaks appear healthier and the prognosis for recovery is good.
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