oaks

There was perhaps no one better than Cornelius H. Muller—one of twentieth-century America’s most notable oak fanatics—to document the continent’s most mysterious oak trees. In July 1932, the horseback-riding botanist first encountered Quercus tardifolia while collecting samples in the steep-cut canyons of Texas’s Big Bend National Park. Muller jotted down details of the twigs (slender, somewhat fluted), buds (hairy at the tip), leaves (dull blue-green), and branches (short, stiff). He anointed it with a Latin name that referenced the tree’s late-season leaf development.

By Steffan Messenger

Studying the rings inside oak trees has allowed scientists to produce one of the most detailed records yet of how the UK's climate has changed over the last millennium.

It reveals a picture of summer rainfall stretching back more than 800 years. Periods of prolonged extreme weather coincided with historical accounts of famines and droughts.