Speaker: David Peter; US Forest Service
Description: Oregon white oak, Garry oak, Quercus garryana—Three names for a singular species. What else ties the San Gabriel Mountains north of Los Angeles with Courtenay, British Columbia? The shrubby Brewer’s oak variety perched at 5000 feet in oak chaparral overlooks the Mohave Desert, while the sometimes massive garryana variety has its toes in the Salish Sea. Although Garry oak is the only native variety, indeed the only species of native oak north of Eugene it exemplifies the diversity of the entire species, growing as it does from west-side slough-sedge wetlands to east-side rock outcrops, from salt water to 2500 feet east of the Cascades, it can be a shrub or an 8 ft thick tree. It is food for a myriad of species from insects to mammals, including humans and it is habitat for arboreal lichens, cavity nesting birds and shade seeking plants and animals. As versatile and important as this tree is, all is not well in its world. Tonight, we will ponder this unique species—its beauty, its ecology and its troubled relationship with the latest, mostly unappreciative wave of humanity.
Short bio: David Peter hails from the farms and sagebrush of southern Idaho where he received his BS in Biology from the College of Idaho in 1973. Here his interest in plant ecology was born and soon he was off to Washington State University where he received his MS in Botany with a thesis on the dendrochronology of Juniperus occidentalis in the Owyhee Mountains of southeastern Oregon. After stints working in Hells Canyon, the Blue mountains in Oregon, and the Pinyon-Juniper woodlands of Nevada, Dave’s next stop in life was Olympia, Washington. Here his US Forest Service career began when he was hired first as a technician and later as an Ecologist for the Olympic and Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forests. In these capacities, Dave, helped craft plant association classifications and fire histories. Although he loved this work, this original denizen of the dry found himself pulled toward the open and somewhat dryer west side prairies and oak woodlands. Looking for new horizons he made the momentous move (across town) to the Pacific Northwest Research Station in 1999 where he became involved in oak and prairie research. For more than 16 years, with the help of citizen volunteers and agency cooperators he conducted a study of the ecology of Garry oak acorn production from British Columbia to northern California. He was also involved in a wide variety of studies mostly looking at various aspects of Douglas-fir silviculture ecology. He returned to school for his Doctorate from the University of Washington and graduated in 2006, having produced his very own doorstopper entitled: Effects of Underburning on Oregon White Oak Reproductive Capacity. As Dave wraps up his career (officially December 31, 2021), he is working on papers on the status and ecology of whitebark pine in the Olympic Buckhorn Wilderness, fire and harvesting effects on beargrass, effects of heat (i. e. fire) on seed germination of prairie species, and the mapping of historical prairies and other anthropogenic vegetation on the Olympic Peninsula.
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Whenever one of my customers wants a tree planted, I push this tree harder than any other. I always tell them I consider it. Mother nature's Swiss army knife. The Oak in general I consider mother nature's Swiss army knife