six years and still learning

i know i should know this. i feel like i maybe did know this once. but i can’t remember knowing it, if i ever did. anyway, somehow, after six-plus years of scouring my surroundings for raw material for STILL blog, i just discovered today that red oaks have delicate, dangling, male catkins. the leaves in this photo are maybe only an inch long. i know i’ve seen them before at this time of year during my walks on this same trail. how did i miss those beautiful catkins? there isn’t much of the color red on this red oak sample. but i am a little bit red-faced.

read oak catkins