THE FUTURE OF WHITE OAK
Competition is fierce in the forest. If an oak tree is going to thrive for a century or more, it has to vie for natural resources such as light and water. It’s got to defend itself against invasive plants and weeds. Pestilence is always a threat. In recent years, white oak seedlings in forests on the western side of the Mississippi River – in states like Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas – have not been surviving. There are giant white oaks that began their lives not long after the Victorian era, and there are small trees just making their way. But there are not a whole lot of middle-sized trees. Without the so-called ‘mid-story canopy’, when an old oak tree is harvested it will take a very long time before it’s replaced. This is a problem.
“It raises alarm when you see something that should be there isn’t. There’s a recognition there’s a problem. We need seedlings to survive and be bigger,” said Laura DeWald, improvement specialist in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources at University of Kentucky. “The White Oak Initiative was created to try to figure that out.”
Projected to run for 15 years, the initiative is a sweeping, multi-faceted program through which researchers are aiming to discover what conditions and agricultural practices help a white oak tree flourish. It also aims to map the white oak’s DNA and harness its genealogy to figure out optimal growing conditions. In other words, to call this gargantuan project ‘ambitious’ would be something of an understatement.
Due to the whiskey industry’s dependence on white oak and how critical it is to have access to this
