Burr Oaks of Okoboji IA

I’m standing outside of my family’s cottage and burr oaks surround the place with one odd tree ( I may post to ID if you fellas want a couple leaves to read later...), see what’s going on there? Oak wilt. Time to Stop Pruning Oaks

In October 2017, the last year I was here A fungus was going around killing the oak trees. Either all bare or just last remaining brown leaves. My dad and I would be out fishing and we could pick apart all the trees that have begun or submitting to this disease and in our cottage property and the adjoining one a total of 7 trees will be taken down(duct taped for marking). In fact, House next door had a tree fall down in a storm that slammed the place last weekend and it nearly hit a house, just grazing the power meter on the outside. One of our cottage friends lives there, whew very lucky.

It’s sad but the article reads that the wilt gets either carried via beetle or by root grafts from sick tree to healthy. It also says that any wounded trees either by storm or by pruning should stop and paint it with acrylic paint. I’m more than certain that some are 50+ years of age. Planted as part of shade and wind break, which can be quite strong on this lake, could very well be gone in a matter of years. Sad to say I won’t be able to participate in the woodwork here to do anything with it. If I could I’d love to but there’s no time or feasible option as we don’t stay here for more than a week at a time.​

 

Here’s the tree that fell down, just narrowly missed the house. This one was still pretty much living but the base had rotted well through.


Out fishing, the brown tops are patchy but looks like a warning.

 

That hollow stump is pretty scary. Lots of houses in your pics for those nightmares to fall on. 7 trees on two lots, that will be a lot of wood! Is it considered infectious, not to be transported? Can you ask to keep the logs?

 

I don’t think this is likely. I also wondered if keeping the wood around may do worse than good. Now I can get the perspective of EAB a little bit. Thing is these trees aren’t exactly pretty year to year, its green then its fall. No colors changing so I learned something new about that. But I hope in the near future to replace what was cut down so that more can be ready for the next turnover of trees. It’s all pretty much hypothetical at this point but it’s interesting what we will need to do in order to keep our cottage safe. This will open up a large part of the canopy but may have a benefit as the ground often is soggy constantly.

 

They seem pretty stressed. The soggy ground may be the problem. What species of oak is it?

 

Burr. The DNR said that there was also another disease that went around killing these oaks called Burr Oak Blight, starting at the leaves. Since I hadn’t had time to find out the difference if one tree died one way (tree autopsy??) then it’s hard to know now. The worst issue is how the tree that came down has plenty of leaves on it yet no idea if it has the fungus. Yet the majority of the other trees have little to no leaves at all.

 

Our red oaks get killed by some type of blight as well. Just nature's way of making an opening I guess. Good problem to have if you need firewood!

 

True! The wood would be great to work with! I don’t live there though, it’s a family cottage where people have come for summers since 1915.

 

Yeah they said to keep the cutting to a minimum then or paint acrylic on the wounds. Only problem is if a healthy tree gets it’s branches broken in a storm during then, that’s likely hard to fix...