Oaks on Cloudforest One
On my trip to Cloudforests One last month, I checked in on the progress of our oaks.
Planted in groups throughout the site at different times, it’s wonderful watching how quickly these little “sticks in the ground” are becoming real trees - locking carbon within and underground, and providing homes and food for many, many different species.
Oaks can live up to 1000 years, with any trees over 400 years old classes as “ancient”. So while the Cloudforest Oaks are barely out of their starting blocks in comparison, we’re delighted to see each tree is creating a new world for its inhabitants to live in. Some of our older oaks planted 4 years ago are already producing acorns and as we wrote in our blog a few days ago, a number of the young trees have tenants making themselves right at home - check out our blog on oak gall wasps here.
Oaks are real powerhouses of biodiversity - here in Ireland, a single oak supports at least 284 different insects species and 324 species of lichen* while the acorns are a favourite food for badgers, squirrels, woodpeckers, wood mice, rooks and jays. In fact, jays are responsible for planting many a mighty oak, as they bury any extra acorns to eat later… and sometimes forget to go back for them! The insects living and feeding on oaks also attract hunting spiders, birds and bats.
*Source: All-Ireland Pollinator Plan
So aside from supporting nature, what else are our oaks up to? Well, they might be young, but they’re already busy sequestering carbon and helping produce fresh oxygen for us all to breath. Using the Carbon Storage Calculator produced by Natural Resources Wales and based on the current ages and size of our Cloudforest One oak trees, we estimate that their dry weight totals approximately 5663 kg, meaning our oaks alone are currently locking away about 2800 kg of carbon, down in Lahinch Co. Clare.
We can’t wait to revisit this calculation in a few years when they’ve grown a bit more, and see what they’re storing then!
