The Tanoak Tree: An Environmental History of a Pacific Coast Hardwood

*Forthcoming Spring 2015*

Tanoak (Notholithocarpus densiflorus) is a resilient and common hardwood tree native to California and southwestern Oregon. Paradoxically people’s radically different perceptions of the tree have ranged from cash crop to treasured food plant to trash tree. Having studied the patterns of tanoak use and abuse for nearly twenty years, botanist Frederica Bowcutt uncovers a complex history of socio-political and economic factors affecting the tree’s fate.

This common associate of coast redwood was known by many indigenous names including in the Kashaya Pomo language chishkale, which translates to “beautiful tree.” As the source of nutritious acorns, tanoak remains important to Native Americans committed to maintaining traditional cultural practices. Many are working to revive indigenous burning practices that foster tanoak wellness.

From the mid-19th to early 20th centuries, tanoak bark was a lucrative source of the vegetable tannin used in leather production. However, resource depletion and increased global competition led to a tapering of bark harvesting by the 1920s and its end in the early 21st century. Despite protests since the 1980s, tanoaks continue to be killed in industrial forests to favor reforestation with the currently more commercially valuable coast redwood and Douglas-fir. As one non-toxic alternative, many foresters and northern California communities promote locally controlled and smaller-scale hardwood production using tanoak that doesn’t depend on clear-cutting and herbicide use.

Today tanoak is experiencing massive die-offs due to sudden oak death despite over a hundred years of plant quarantine laws and scientific forestry as well as decades of environmental regulations designed to safeguard our forests. Bowcutt examines the complex set of factors that set the stage for the tree’s current ecological crisis.

However, the appearance of some disease resistance in tanoak offers hope for the future, as does the emerging army of tanoak defenders from plant pathologists and foresters to concerned citizens including Native Americans. This well researched book will appeal to readers interested in how economics and ecology intersect in tangible ways and how the resulting impacts on the land in turn impact local communities.

[theecologistcowboy]

Yesss! I love it. These trees need some more credit. Thank you.

[bobfrank]

Thanks for the little education on the tan oak.
I hike passed them as understory trees in redwood forests and trails in N California. I now have a greater appreciation for them knowing how they struggled form the axe and now blight.

[vames]

Love this video! I was recently hiking Muir woods when I overheard somebody say that some type of oak species was a very common understory tree. I was able to identify the common understory tree, but it looked very unusual for an “oak tree” (nothing like the oaks I’m familiar with from my home in the Midwestern USA). It took me a little bit of effort to identify them as this species, which now understanding are limited to a fairly small region of California and Oregon, and not an actual oak, makes a heck of a lot more sense. Thanks for this informative video!

[arboristBlairGlenn]

Great presentation, thank you. Our 20 acre Santa Cruz Mountain property has about a thousand tan oak trees. Several hundred have died. Hundreds more are dying. Looking for SOD resistant trees. I may have found one.

Arborist Blair Glenn on YouTube

[Shroommduke]

I can't tell one oak from another, is there a good video on oak identification?

[miamianz]

i have one these growing in my northside of my driveway just popped up, im worried theres a giant flying squirrel i thought it was a fruit tree or something. wondering if it came in a planter either way im excited but dont know where to place it, in a container and leave it in that area? i dont want to kill it. Central Florida Here.