Field journal

Golden-cupped acorn on the hilltop

Woodland Hilltop

  • A gloved hand holds a smooth brown acorn topped by a thick, golden, fuzzy cup, with yellow dust on the glove's fingers and leaf litter and wood chips on the ground below.

    An acorn with a thick golden cup, probably from a canyon live oak (Quercus chrysolepis).

An acorn with a thick, golden, felted cup, held in a work glove at Woodland Hilltop Arbory on October 28. Yellow dust, probably fuzz from the cup, coated the glove’s fingers. From the cup, it is probably from a canyon live oak (Quercus chrysolepis).

Oaks are part of the forest mix the Woodland Hilltop restoration favors on the hilltop, along with gray pine, ponderosa pine and incense cedar. Where oaks have sprouted from old stumps, we prune them so they grow as trees rather than shrubs: stronger, more durable stores of carbon that in time become part of the overstory.

Themes Monitoring biodiversity Ecological restoration

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