Some Day a Mighty Oak?

In February we planted 10 bare root Gary Oak trees in the Greenbelt. I think only three of them are going to live, but those three are doing well. This afternoon, I took two photos of one of them. The white areas on the leaves are cotton-like fibers from nearby cottonwood trees.

It is hard to imagine that this little tree may someday become a mighty oak. But it is also hard to imagine that only two months ago there was only one tiny bud on the top of this tree; and that bud didn’t appear to have any life in it.. I wonder how tall the tree will be by the end of the summer.

I was concerned that we planted the oaks too close together, but in writing this post I looked for a photo of a mature Garry Oak and found this! Maybe they were planted just where they were “supposed” to be planted, close to their friends.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia

The original uploader was Llywrch at English Wikipedia.
[CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons