(Warning: Terrible, terrible pictures taken with my worthless phone camera!)
"Though I do not believe a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders."
Henry D. Thoreau, Faith in a Seed
Last fall and into winter, I had collected some acorns, hoping I might get at least a few to sprout so I could plant a few oak trees on the property. I had put them in pots, labeled them, and set them aside to wait for spring.
Well, today as I was misting the Blackhaw (Viburnum prunifolium) shoots, I happened to notice a tiny little sprout in one of the pots.
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| Oak sprout at the edge of the pot (about the 11 o'clock position). |
To my surprise, when I picked the pot up for a closer look, there were large white roots coming out the bottom of the pot!
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| Roots coming from the bottom of the pot. |
I should have planted the acorns in deeper pots to begin with, but I don't have any of the "tree pots" to use for that kind of thing. But a while back, when I had decided to try to root some cuttings from the old grape vine, I had pulled some of RAF's plastic creamer containers out of the recycling, cut the bottom out of them and turned them upside down to make some deeper pots. Since then, I had started saving the creamer containers, thinking I might have a use for them at some point. And today was that "some point."
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| Creamer containers being repurposed as "tree pots." |
Four of the creamer containers fit perfectly in a plastic ice cream bucket, so I now have eight of the sprouted acorns planted in these deeper "pots."
I tried to be very gentle handling them, so hopefully I didn't break any of the roots or the little sprouts. The acorns that hadn't yet sprouted, or were just now starting to sprout, were left in the smaller pots since I ran out of creamer containers. The creamer containers are all sitting in the south window now. Five of them contain Southern Red Oak (Quercus falcata) acorns that I collected from the huge old tree in the front yard. The other three are acorns I collected down at the creek. I'm not sure what kind they are, but I'm pretty sure they're from a tree in the red oak family - I think the leaves have pointy ends on them anyway. The acorns were quite large, about 5/8" round-shaped, with a cap that looks like a little hat. I wonder if it's a Pin Oak (Quercus palustris)? If they live, I will find out!
Unfortunately, the Bur Oak (Quercus macrocarpa) acorn that my older sister gave me probably isn't going to sprout. I'm not giving up hope, but since it's in the white oak family, I think if it was going to sprout it would have already done so.
Seeds really are little miracles, aren't they....