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~ foundations of ecosystem re-
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PERMACULTUBE
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Oaktober: Nailing colors to the mast
trees like our native Or-
egon white oak (Quercus
garryana) have been the
It’s Oaktober. Masting
silience for millennia. “Mast—
ing” means crop-producing,
and it derives from the
Middle English word “mete”
(meat), a generic term for
food.
The Quercus genus is the
granary of wildlife including
squirrels, bears and deer, and it has
been valued as food and feed by hu-
mans who have fostered it as part of
our community. Quercus is a keystone
genus: they provide so many benefits
to hundreds of species that they have
an influence disproportionate to their
population.
Once widespread throughout the
Pacific Northwest, the Garry oak dis-
tribution has narrowed due to a num-
ber of causes, not the least of which
is lumber forestry. It’s ironic that the
tree once excluded by the Coastal Sal-
ish tribes has come to dominate our
regional ecology. .
These tribes (and others, like th
Kalapuya of Oregon’s Willamette Val—
ley) used to burn the forests to exclude
Douglas fir from their oak-dotted prai-
ries, and encourage the development
of favorable guilds, or associations of
plants. In OSU Press’s.“Indians, Fire
and the Land in the Pacific North-
west,” one researcher described this
indigenous valley lifestyle as a “pyro—
culture,” and the Willamette is called
“the most intensively fire-managed
environment in the aboriginal North-
By ALEx
FETHIERE
west.” '
The Oregon white oak was
key to this managed ecology
all the way into Vancou-
ver. Canada is encouraging
Garry oak reforestation with
pamphlets like “The Garry
Oak Gardener’s Handbook,”
which explains how to rec-
reate the diverse meadow
polyculture anchored around
these trees. South Sound-
ers will recognize many of
the landscape and edible plants that
thrive in the dappled shade of oaks,
e.g., nodding onion, broadleaved
stonecrop, and camas lily.
Camas lily is known more for its
beautiful flower than its food value.
Its edible bulb has long been prized
as a native food, and for our purposes
is cooked in a pressure cooker (nine
hours) or steamed on a wood stove
(all day). For the tribes that practiced
pyroculture, it was traditionally eaten
after burning the prairie: the bulbs
were baked in the ground.
Unfortunately the 1850 Act for
the Government and Protection of
Indians, which has had consequences
beyond camascuisine, has foreclosed
this traditional method. After over a
century of misguided policy, the For-
est Service has partially reversed this
practice, and once again benevolent
fires tease the oaks to drop their
acorns. '
Our grandfather of oaks has
dropped some acorns that I’ve taken
to my nursery. Perhaps the most fa-
mous of the South Sound’s Garry oaks
is the Jack Davis Oak in Olympia.
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‘ Oregon white oak, also known as Garry oak, was once widespread in the
Pacific Northwest. Journal photos by Alex Féthiere
This tree, believed to be four centuries
old, narrowly avoided destruction dur-
ing highway improvement in 1984.
Named for the environmentalist who
spearheaded its rescue, it has a folk
association with Oregon Trail pioneer
Ezra Meeker. I expect to plant out my
Davis—Meeker oaks this season, along
with a large number of non-pedigreed
Garry oaks and another variety that
v produces more edible acorns.
Anyone who has nibbled on an
acorn has probably wondered what
critters and people see in them. The
Coastal Salish baked them, ate them
with salmon eggs or pounded them
into a meal to accompany fish. Nutri—
tionally, acorns resemblecorn. Most
preparations of acorns involve an ex-
tensive period of leaching to remove
tannins.
Tannins impart a face-withering
astringency to acorns as a deterrent to
fungi, bacteria, fire and critters, and
they appear-throughout the vegetal
world. Think of the complexity they
lend wine. Fittingly, the word “tan-
nin” comes from the Celtic root “tann,”
meaning “oak” _— maybe some anthro—
pologists are correct that humans,
over the millennia, have eaten more
calories from acorns than we have
from wheat.
This could only have been possible
with leaching, which even squirrels
accomplish by burying acorns to let
the soil draw out the bitterness. This
technique has worked for tribes who
leave acorns in mud for up to a sea-
son. The meal can also be soaked in
repeated changes of water until sweet,
then dried or cooked.
Although I haven’t seen any talk
about eating acorns, some states cel-
ebrate these integral trees during Oak
Awareness Month. This Oaktober,
let’s get to know our garryana a little
better.
I Alex Fe’thiére has lived on Harst-
ine Island long enough to forget New
York City, where he built community
gardens and double-dug his suburban
sod into a victory garden. He can be
reached at onlandist@gmail.com.
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