Oak

Tags: Trees Description: The trunk of the oak is grey, with cracked bark. There is no resin. The leaves are dark green and lobed. There are often two ear-like lobes at the base. Oak can live for several hundred years and produces the thickest trunks of any tree in Norway. When oaks grow old, they rot from the inside, and the trunk becomes hollow. Inside hollow oaks, wood mould forms, which is a mixture of rotted wood and the remains of dead organisms that have lived inside the trunk. Wood mould is full of nutrients, and that is why many species of insect want to live there.

Use: https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevirke of oak is strong and hard and tolerates water very well. It is therefore much used for building structures, floors and furniture. In earlier times, oak trees were widely used for https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verft. Many Viking ships are built of oak. An «eike» is a name for a small rowing boat. The word originally means a boat hollowed out of an oak trunk. Oak firewood can be difficult to get going, precisely because it is so hard, but once it catches, it burns rather well and for a long time. In the old days, people used the bud burst of the oak to predict what the summer would be like: «ask før eik gir steik, eik før ask gir plask». If the ash leafed out first, the summer would be warm and dry, but if the oak leafed out first, the summer would be wet. Habitat type: Forest Edible: No Written by: Lærke Stewart

, via Wikimedia Commons](Eik/Eik.jpg)

Oak leaves and acorns. Photo: Robert Flogaus-Faust, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Next steps

• Scots pine — another tree species
• Norway spruce — another tree species
• Aspen — another tree species
• Forest — the biotope
• Plants — the hub

Learn more

• Artsdatabanken — species, status, Red List
• SNL — Norwegian botany — encyclopaedic
• Sopp- og Nyttevekstforbundet — courses and identification checks
• Botanisk forening — Norwegian botany community