Daily Oak, March report

Daily Oak statistics:

Number of days missed: 6

Guest tree pictures: 6

Number of days with more than one visit: 6

Number of visits with more than the two standard perspectives taken: 17

Total number of pictures taken: 103

First of all, a friend of mine who has recently begun a career as geo-cacher and has therefore acquired a mobile GPS has supplied me with the exact geographical coordinates of Daily Oak: N 48 Grad   26.28,77    E 012 Grad  20.46,06

I found that Daily Oak has a bit of a face (not sure that it is a happy one, though):

I took pictures of the tree with a waxing moon in the middle of the month, but they were not taken from the standard perspectives.

Here is the view from the backside which I promised in my last report:

And here are two particularly nice pictures, one of each of the two standard perspectives:

Perspective b, March 2, 5:08 p.m.

Perspective a, March 14, 1:49 p.m.

This month was troubled towards the end by the fact that my camera had to be sent off for repair and was gone for an entire week. I did have a different digital camera, with a different lense, and I kept going to see the tree, however, I had to alter my position when taking the pictures slightly to get a similar view on the photos. I was very happy when my camera came back yesterday and I could resume my routine as usual.

This month has also found me beginning to do a little more research on oaks, which I did not really know a whole lot about, I have to admit. I found out that oaks are the most important kind of tree in the northern hemisphere, and that they are the kind of tree which offers a habitat for the largest number of insects and other species, making every oak a little world of organisms in itself. They tend to get very old, and the oldest reported tree in Europe is indeed an oak in Bulgaria. You can even find a list of the oldest oaks in Germany on Wikipedia. 

I remember that I have visited the so-called thousand-year-oaks in northern Germany („tausendjährige Eichen in Ivenack“) and was very impressed. Daily Oak is definitely not quite so old, but I have decided that I will try to find out approximately how old it is.

One day I took several photos of the trunk and bark and other parts of the tree, and when you look at it from a closer perspective you can see that it has had difficult times. 

The Annual Report on the Situation and Health of German Forests (Waldschadensbericht) was recently published, and it states that about half of the oaks in Germany are not faring well. Perhaps this one belongs amongst them? The bark looks pretty well, though:

We’ll see as the year progresses.

The six guest trees will be featured in a separate post.