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Santa Teresa Park's Giant Leather Oaks, 10/3/22 by Ronald Horii
Santa Teresa County Park has lots of oak trees and shrubs. The Hidden Springs Trail has valley, blue, and coast live oak trees. I've hiked up that trail for many years, on my way to the top of Coyote Peak. One thing that puzzled me were these strange trees that were as big as coast live oaks, but had smaller and denser leaves. I always wondered what they were. Were they some freaky mutation or hybrids of the coast live oaks. I eventually figured out they were unusually tall leather oaks. Leather oaks, Quercus durata, are considered to be shrubs. They normally grow no taller than 5-15 feet. These trees here are more than twice that. How do they get so tall? I have a theory. The normal habitat for leather oaks is dry, rocky, nutrient-poor serpentine soil. It grows with other chaparral plants, like manzanita. However, it can tolerate other soils, as long as they are well-drained and low in nutrients. I suspect the leather oak trees here are growing in conditions that promote their unusual growth. These pictures show how to get to the trees and how to identify them. Here's information about leather oaks:
https://calscape.org/Quercus-durata-%28%29. Here's information and a map of Santa Teresa Park:
https://parks.sccgov.org/santa-clara-county-parks/santa-teresa-county-park. Here are more pictures of Santa Teresa Park: http://www.stpfriends.org/#newpictures. Leather oaks are also along the Stile Ranch Trail and Mine Trail in Santa Teresa Park. Other parks where I've seen leather oaks are Rancho San Vicente/Calero, Almaden Quicksilver, and Coyote Valley Open Space Preserve. There's a very tall leather oak at the top of the Senador Mine Trail in Almaden Quicksilver in a similar shady serpentine environment as these here in Santa Teresa.
Santa Teresa County Park has lots of oak trees and shrubs. The Hidden Springs Trail has valley, blue, and coast live oak trees. I've hiked up that trail for many years, on my way to the top of Coyote Peak. One thing that puzzled me were these strange trees that were as big as coast live oaks, but had smaller and denser leaves. I always wondered what they were. Were they some freaky mutation or hybrids of the coast live oaks. I eventually figured out they were unusually tall leather oaks. Leather oaks, Quercus durata, are considered to be shrubs. They normally grow no taller than 5-15 feet. These trees here are more than twice that. How do they get so tall? I have a theory. The normal habitat for leather oaks is dry, rocky, nutrient-poor serpentine soil. It grows with other chaparral plants, like manzanita. However, it can tolerate other soils, as long as they are well-drained and low in nutrients. I suspect the leather oak trees here are growing in conditions that promote their unusual growth. These pictures show how to get to the trees and how to identify them. Here's information about leather oaks:
https://calscape.org/Quercus-durata-%28%29. Here's information and a map of Santa Teresa Park:
https://parks.sccgov.org/santa-clara-county-parks/santa-teresa-county-park. Here are more pictures of Santa Teresa Park: http://www.stpfriends.org/#newpictures. Leather oaks are also along the Stile Ranch Trail and Mine Trail in Santa Teresa Park. Other parks where I've seen leather oaks are Rancho San Vicente/Calero, Almaden Quicksilver, and Coyote Valley Open Space Preserve. There's a very tall leather oak at the top of the Senador Mine Trail in Almaden Quicksilver in a similar shady serpentine environment as these here in Santa Teresa.
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