From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness/Brian Catt
More, truly juvenile reporting in the Telegraph:
English oak trees are being replaced by foreign variants because they can no longer cope with the British heat, experts have warned.
Searing temperatures across the UK have forced tree nurseries to import oaks germinated in southern Europe, which are better equipped than home-grown trees at surviving hot weather.
Full story here.
English oaks, formally named Quercus robur or pedunculate oak, are common across most of Europe, where they have considerably hotter summers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quercus_robur
The idea that it is too hot for them in England is ridiculous.
Ironically, Brian Catt posted this on X and got this reply from the “journalist”, Patrick Galbraith:
https://twitter.com/catandman/status/2087996547715784989
As confirmed by the Woodland Trust:
You’d think an Environment Correspondent might know this!
Most all of that greenness sits above the US Northern Latitude so the US mainland has a better chance to be warmer year round…especially California where Oaks Flourish year round. Oaks like it Warmer.
Same here in NSW Australia.
‘English Oaks’ mature twice as fast as in England.
They prefer good soil and under their branches large numbers
of daytime flying mosquitoes breed.
Lets start a new climate scare to be mastered by the Telegraph.
‘English oaks will be growing faster and more leafy,
attract mosquitoes and cause a Dengue fever outbreak
and all the little children will die or become disabled.’
Wood density is higher when grown in warm conditions better for those ships we will need when the green nutters get their way
There are oaks wild in Sarawak Borneo Even felled a few not the same species but still Querces the tolerance is very wide
Ya they sure love the Houston area. To say it’s to hot in England for oak trees wo0uld be embarassing even to a fool.
O:-)
The MSN edition of the story says “This story is unavailable” while the Telegraph site itself has a somewhat lengthy error message saying, amongst other things “You are not authorized to access this content without a valid TollBit Token“.
Could it be the article was so awful that it’s been pulled before too much embarrassment occurs?
I can see it just fine.
Perhaps technical difficulties when I tried? Page seems to be available but paywalled now.
It is unrealistic to expect a climate alarmist to check facts before spouting drivel. After all, if they are climate alarmists, facts don’t matter.
The idea that Oaks in England are endangered by climate change is probably an extrapolation from the fact some very old notable examples, that have been on their last legs for decades, have finally died.
The rest of the idea of the article is however correct and well known in plant culture; provenances.
Although technically the same species, oaks from hotter areas or areas with different diseases; they will have better genetic predisposition to deal with those problems.
Previous warm periods and holocine climatic optimum So the uk provenance will handle it just fine As it does in Australia
UK trees have already been through many generations. Few are truly ancient or even old. So not necessarily true. Australian oaks will likely have adaptations different to their ancestors. They will have self selected at the first hurdle.
Of course they don’t need to bring in acorns from hotter areas, but they will have a far better proportion of survivors if indeed the climate in the UK did rapidly get too hot/dry.
Realistically the UK climate is unlikely to change so rapidly to such a hostile extent that existing UK stock can’t cope.
So we’ll probably just end up with a generation of trees that rot in the wet and chill like that seen at the end of the Roman warm period!
The common English term for people as opinionated and ignorant as Galbraith is “Twat”
I would like to offer “wanker” for consideration, given the self gratification aspect.
Buffoon, jackass, dolt, ninny, dunce, nitwit, doofus, cretin, nincompoop, oaf, dullard…or maybe just a good old-fashioned dummy!
They grow and self seed in Australia and mature trees cope with hot dry summers.
Quercus robur is sparingly naturalised and locally classified as a minor environmental weed in parts of Victoria (such as near urban bushland or reserves in Melbourne) and the ACT, according to Gemini.
And the seed for these trees would have originally come from the UK so the provenance claim is bollocks ( provenance is a population from a given area Galbraith is trying to blow a smoke screen )
The UK provenance grew / thrived through the medieval and other warm periods so more bollocks .
Yer, Darwin was a fraud.
Sure, but you’d need to elaborate in what fashion.
I think the title “Environment Correspondent” tells you all you need to know.
CV watch: Patrick Galbraith: MA English Literature.
So no, such a correspondent is the last person I would expect to know anything about anything.
Indeed, an “Environment Correspondent” is paid to specifically not notice anything that is incompatible with “the message”.
If you actually read the Telegraph article, you would see they are importing the same species of oak, but different variants, ones that do better in warmer climates because they are from the southern range for English Oak.
Correct, they also point out the different variants have different disease resistances which may be a problem. The other native species of oak (Sessile oak, Quercus petraea) that grows in the higher and more northern parts of Britain would also be vulnerable to warming.
Not a surprise, considering the academic track that most journalists take nowadays that are utterly lacking in solid academics. Even our most elite universities are now expunging first year grades because “mental health”.
Plants do not genetically adapt to average conditions. They adapt to extreme conditions, in particular to timing of first & last frost/freeze dates in relation to their flowering (the basis for USDA “growing zones” map).
Some people are slow learners.
Oaks grow all over the US south, so this is just more lies.
They survived the last time this happened. I have the feeling that oak trees can stand several hot years. They didn’t evolve in a climate controlled green house.