LIVING RELICTS OF THE DISTANT PAST
On a bizarre geologic formation in West Texas grows the only population of a rare oak species known as Hinckley's Oak. It forms extensive thickets here on a geologic formation known for its many nooks and crannies due to a magma plume that swelled up beneath it like a bubble in a pizza crust, distorting & exposing all the successive layers of sedimentary rocks beneath.
This oak doesn't get tall here - maybe 3' tops. The leaves themselves resemble little spiny blue holly leaves, leathery with red petioles.
Plants with really small geographic distributions are always fascinating. Such is the case with this rare oak. In the case of Quercus hinckleyi, it's whats known as a paleoendemic, meaning that in the distant past it was once more widespread, but as the climate shifted & the surrounding landscape became hotter and drier and generally more inhospitable, populations of this tree at lower elevations died out and it became relegated to this higher, somewhat shadier and cooler "sky island".
Whats even more bizarre is that in cultivation this oak reaches heights of about 20' tall, like at San Antonio Bot Garden but here in the mountains of West Texas near the Mexican Border, it tops out at about 3' tall, & many individuals are no taller than 12 inches, forming little colonies with multiple stems, each colony likely a single genetic individual growing up through fissures in the limestone substrate below.
Standing up here on this slope as the sun hung low in a murky sky, I tried to imagine what a woodland composed of these oaks must've looked like 12,000 years ago & how the climate & surrounding desert must've changed since then. Moments like that are one of the most addicting things to anyone interested in botany - Gaining an understanding and a knowledge of the land you live on & how all the different organisms & environmental factors in it interact is part of what seems to make a fulfilling human life. It gives us a contextual setting in which to put ourselves & our own conscience & sentience, so that this often fucked up, insane world begins to make sense.
