Botanical lore

Perhaps known best for its impressive longevity of one thousand years and more, oaks usually live for six to eight hundred years. It is also well known for its strong, durable wood that has been highly valued since time immemorial.

Less well-known is that, with more than five hundred species of insects depending on it for food and shelter, and a large number of birds and animals, oak is well named as king of the forest. Its acorns contain approximately seventy per cent starch and sugar, and six per cent protein. Unlike other members of the beech family (including sweet chestnut) which grow in closed and spiky containers, oak acorns ripen in open cups - those of the pedunculate oak sit on long stalks (with nearly stalkless leaves), while those of the sessile oak are the other way round. Oaks are wind pollinated, carrying both sexes on the same tree and, since both squirrels and jays bury acorns as larders (which are then often forgotten), regeneration of oaks is not under threat!

 

Curiously, oak is sensitive to hard frost, which is why it does not grow in the north of Siberia and why it is one of the last trees to produce leaves in spring. However, dry or moist soil conditions enable it to thrive well, hence its predominance in Britain. Where soils do not allow its roots to develop fully it often loses out to its close relative, the beech. Its bark protects the oak from heat, and can help it survive forest fires, although lightning strikes the oak more often than most trees, a fact highlighted in its mythology as well of interest scientifically. Oaks like to grow above subterranean watercourses and - importantly - they possess strong electrical currents. Experiments have shown that the electrical current of an oak is far higher than that of any other tree in temperate climates (birch comes close, but are much smaller trees and fluctuate more depending on the amount of light available).

 

The root system of the pedunculate oak is gigantic, supporting a thick trunk with powerful metabolism and great vitality. While its overall shape is often wider than it is high (slender oaks only occur in densely packed plantations), it can grow very irregularly in shape, with single branches spreading far out. Indeed, sudden changes of branch direction and an irregular crown are typical features of the oak, and its overall canopy, like its irregularly lobed leaves, are distinctive.

 

This irregularity of growth is not accidental since, as with its electrical sensitivity, oak is also influenced by planetary activity, most particularly Mars. This planet has the greatest dynamic effect on plant growth, which means that every time Mars is behind the sun its distance away from us is roughly seven times greater than it is just over a year later, when Earth and Mars are both orbiting on the same side of the Sun. In this latter phase, Mars stimulates root growth and, when the planet spins off and away again, it and the sun stimulate upward growth. Although all plants are open to this influence, most are modified by other forces, so that oak remains as a clear example of planetary effects, just as the tides demonstrate most clearly the effects of the moon.

 

Whilst very bitter to the taste, oak has very high levels of tannic acid, which makes it excellent for tanning leather, so that immersing oak and leather in large tubs of water has been practised since Neolithic times. It is also antiseptic, with sterilising properties, and its bark or leaves have similarly been made into a tea for countless years as cure for bleeding, diarrhoea (it causes constipation), infections of the digestive tract, liver and bladder problems. Other uses have been for gargles, washes and baths, and for treating rashes, wounds, burns, haemorrhoids, bleeding gums and swollen tonsils. In hard times, acorns were used as food. Because of their bitterness, acorns were usually cut and soaked in water for a few days, changing the water until it became lighter in colour, when the acorns could be dried or roasted, and ground into flour (for bread). Roasted and ground acorns can make a coffee, while a homoeopathic tincture, Quercus, is also made from acorns to help with problems of the liver and especially the spleen. As a Bach Flower Remedy, oak relates to strength and endurance, appropriate for people who take will power and devotion to duty too far.

Extra notes: 70-80 years before produces acorns. growth rate after 100 years 1 inch per year;  Wood: for boat-building, barrels, beams and many uses in building, fencing, mining, garden furniture, sawdust for smoking herrings. Bark: red and brown dyes, with galls a black dye and medicinally for treating malaria, dysentry, bleeding gums, sore throat, haemorrhage, boiling it gives tonic for harness sores. Twigs: toothbrushes Galls: make ink. Acorns: wine.

beech family: fagaceae pedunculate oak (quercus robar) sessile oak (quercus petraea)

 

Mythology

Oak groves, or nemetons, have significance, in that the word Duir/oak means 'door', having its roots in dorus (door), as does druid. A druid is essentially and by definition therefore the 'doorman' or guardian of the (oak) door - the door that looks both ways - which makes sense when it is appreciated that the Duir/oak ends the first half of celtic year at midsummer solstice. Traditionally, Nemi (the 'oak-king') was sacrificied (and replaced) yearly on this date. A similar figure in Roman times is Janus, who is usually illustrated with two heads that look either way. Another associated goddess is Cardea, whose significance belongs more to Huath/hawthorn, and is related to the door-hinge. Although sounding rather a pedantic purpose for divinity, her significance lies in the fact that Cardea is 'the celestial goddess at back of the north wind' who 'calls to the door'. This door, and therefore her vision, leads to reincarnation or other-world.

 

Like Zeus, Jupiter, Thor, Lugh (the 'Shining One') and the King of Nemi ('Oak-King'),  all oak gods and guardians are entitled to thunder (or use the lightning bolt) and in the Welsh poem Battle of the Trees (Cad Goddau) his connection as door between worlds is made:
Before him tremble heaven and earth, stout doorkeeper against the foe, is his name in all lands.

The sacred oak at Dodona (Greece) was, like that of Delphi, a major oracle of the Old World, and an international place of pilgrimage for nearly a thousand years. Its messages were interpreted from the rustling of its branches, from the murmur of the sacred spring that welled from beneath its roots, and thirdly through selection of one of the many oracle lots kept in an urn beneath it. Two priestesses of Dodona asserted that the oracles were brought by two black pigeons from Thebes which (like the craneskin in which the alphabet was brought to Greece by Palamedes), suggests a constant migratory theme that remains merely hinted at, yet quietly insistent in the background.

 

Added notes: in Egypt oak has origins in Amon Ra (the ram) an eight-rayed sun-disc in hand and spiral of immortality sprouting  from his head; mistletoe grows on oak (and hence dwells between heaven & earth). Associations: coltsfoot, white horse, lion, salamander