Water Oak (Quercus nigra) mortality

[wmrussel]

My Dad has a couple of mature water oaks in the woods on the edge of his yard that he just noticed being dead.  One is completely dead and the other is well on its way.  They are both 20+" dbh.  Looking for a starting point to figure out what killed them and if there is a possibility of whatever killed them spreading.

[Texas Ranger]

Water oaks here in Texas are highly suseptable to water changes, and after a hurricane, root damage that extends the water problem.  Water damage being to much or too little.

[SwampDonkey]

Our black ash will sometimes die in groups from water damage or some disease. Usually if it's water, it's from beaver flooding. I'm not familiar with water oak, but it looks like a great species to inhabit the New Brunswick Lowlands, although the soil type down there is not particularly rich.

[Tom]

I wanted to wait for a couple of Foresters to answer and make the thread legal since this is really a spot to ask for educated answers.   

Don's got lots of experience and is from the area too.  Swamp Donkey is good with the books, it just happens that he is way up yonder and some of the Southern USA stuff is mostly research.

I'm not a Forester, but, I do read a lot and live in the same climate as you, pretty much.   Water Oak is a fast growing shade tree that proliferates all over the south and does well on wetter ground.  Jacksonville is built in the St. John River basin and is covered with Water Oaks.  They have even been planted down town and line the streets in the older neighborhoods.

They aren't the preferred tree because the roots are so shallow.  Regardless of the size of the crown, it sits on a saucer of roots that may be only a couple of feet deep.  This is one reason that they can survive in such wet soils, but is also one of the reasons that they are so susceptible to droughts or changing weather.

The life Span of a water oak is only 30 to 50 years and then they begin to degrade quickly.  Fast growth makes the wood a second or third choice for lumber, although it is one of the red oaks.  The wood is open grained and fairly course because of its rate of growth.  It is usually riddled with borer holes and carpenter ants.  The tree doesn't compartmentalize well and it leaves wounds exposed that will rot and provide access to insects and disease.

I have a swamp for a back yard and it is full of water oak.  When I was first getting started, I hated to cut any tree.  Now I hardly flinch when I take down a water oak.  Majestic in their early years, they will often not outlive you and become a hazard to buildings put up in close proximity to them.  Yes, there are water oaks that live to 100 years, but they are almost all in pretty bad shape.

They are susceptible to the same diseases that attack other oaks, Anthracnose, root rot, etc., but, are less able to combat them.  I would agree with Don and expound to say to not fret too much about the demise of other water oaks in the area.

The tree makes pretty good firewood.   I use it to cook on and even though it's not the premier cabinet wood, I cut a lot of lumber from it.  It provides a lot of food for deer and squirrels.  It's harboring of insect larvae makes it a prime target for food sources for woodpeckers.   It's decayed snags are useful for wildlife homes.

If you aren't interested in leaving a snag, I'd just take it down and plant another.   There is a good chance that the ground is already inundated in seed and all it needs is a little sun to have thousands of seedlings appear.

[Texas Ranger]

I am gonna make you an honorary, or is that ornery, forester, you have a much better presentation of the finer points, but yeah, what Tom said.

[Tom]

I would be most honored to be an "ornery forester".  :D

Y'all just keep on teachin'   

[Jeff]

Isn't the hard shelled seed of an ornery forester called a curmudgeon?

[Tom]

Does that make an Ornery Curmudgeon forester a P. Baptist too?  :-\

[Texas Ranger]

Naw, I be methodist. ;D

[SwampDonkey]

I think he's just a hard nut to crack. :D :D :D


SwampDonkey returns to the woods.  ;D

[wmrussel]

I would like to thank you all for the input.  Seeing as the lifespan is so short, my fears of other water oaks dying is gone. 

I'm curious to know what killed them.  What are some symptoms?  Cankers, beetles, etc.....

There is some loblolly close by with a bit of fusiform rust.  I know that part of the life cycle of that fungus is on red oaks.  Any more help will be greatly appreciated!

Pete

[Tom]

While Fusiform uses oaks and other harddwoods for a secondary host, I don't think that it is lethal.  Usually a water oak succumbs to flood and/or drought conditions and old age.  It is susceptible to galls, mistletoe, and diseases of trunk and crown, but its main demise is its short life.  When they have root problems you will see it in the crown first.  Root stress causes the tips of the twigs to die back.  They wil drop their leaves and eventually so will larger branches if the roots aren't recovering.   It is trying to balance its crown with the deprived ability to gather nutrients through the roots.  Even this is lethal only when prolonged.

[Riles]

Take a step back and look at the big picture. Except for lightning and chain saws, there's usually more than one thing at play when a tree dies. Tree, environment and pathogen are all related when it comes to disease and death.

Do any of the other nearby trees look unhealthy? Diseases and bugs tend to be specific to a species (or family, like oak wilt), so if unrelated trees are sick, it's something broad, like air pollution or water levels. Different species will react in different ways, but there should be a reaction.

Look closely at the dead and dying. Anything obvious, like holes, cracks, oozing, mushrooms, etc? Were they green last year and just didn't come up this year, or have they been declining? How close were they to each other? How far to the next water oak? Thump the trees and see if they're hollow (or cut 'em down, in this case).

Water oak is a secondary host for fusiform rust and is not affected by it, it just passes it back to the pines every year. In fact, one of the management techniques for rust is to spray the oaks with fungicide (or cut them out).

Trees are like people in that the older you get, the more susceptible it is to disease. Another management technique for plantation trees is to "promote and maintain vigor." Kinda obvious, huh? The best way to keep your forest healthy is to keep it growing...

[thiggy]

While we are on the topic of water oak...  I have a rather large one which fell victim to Katrina.  Apparently there is still enough root left below ground to support it as it is still living, so has not yet deterioriated.  I was planning to saw it for lumber.  Is it worth quarter sawing, or should I just plane-saw to get as much usable lumber as possible?

[Tom]

Either way will produce pretty boards.  Mostly it depends on the type board that you want.  You will run into borer holes the size of a pencil.  Flat sawed these will mostly end up being round holes, quarter sawed they will be straight grooves except for the pupating chamber at the bottom.   It will turn up some.

Water Oak still displays rather effective medullary rays when quarter sawed and course but good looking grade when flat sawed.  You might find that the rays may chip out when planing and make it hard to finish, but that is a problem with most vertical grain hard-wood boards anyway.

[thiggy]

Thanks for the info Tom.

[Phorester]

WMRUSSEL, 
The first place I'd look for to figure out what killed these water oaks at the edge of a yard is the yard environment itself.  The first inclination of people is always to look for  a disease, "blight", or bug that killed their tree when it is actually a problem with the growing site.  Secondly I look for general environmental problems.  Years of drought, years of exessive rain, patterns of rainfall, etc.

Soil compaction, construction damage underneath the branches of the tree, lawnmower damage, fertilizing, etc., etc., kill more trees in yards every year than all insects and diseases.  Even when the final death stroke is from an insect or disease, quite often these are actually secondary insults to the tree.  They are attracted to a tree that has been weakened by other problems first, and would have died from them whether or not it had been invaded by an insect or disease.

All this being said without the benefit of looking at these trees, of course, but I've looked at hundreds of dying yard trees and trees close to yards in my career and I'd say close to 100% died due to unfavorable growing conditiions, which sometimes attracted insects or diseases to the tree that finished it off.

[Texas Ranger]

About two months ago I did a damage appraisal on a 22 acre tract that had been hit by Rita, mostely oaks and pecans.  With winds around 100 there were a dozen or so trees blown over and others damaged.

Today I did the same tract again for tornado damage, or lineal microburst which is what I think it was.  Anyway, 28 trees, largest ones 60 inch dbh water oaks, blown over with a clay root 10 or 12 feet tall.  The reason?  Lots of rain since Rita, the soil is soaked and they came up like carrots.  About half the trees were water oaks, and every one had stem damage, rot, of some degree or the other.  I think there was about 40,000 feet down, and I doubt if 4 or 5 stems could have been sawn for lumber.

[Pullinchips]

I too agree with tom Q. nigra (water) is a realitively shortlived oak like willow oak. At that size they are probably just suffering decline and dieing from an old age if there is no other signs of damage or pest.  Another thought that i dont think was mentioned is if there was any soil compaction or root damage that may have occured at the base of the tree, the tree could suffer.

-nate