1sagittarius; I have to agree with SAK on this one. The Sawtooth oak is a lower (50-60 ' ) tree which populates the nitch between shrubs and the climax forest. White oks grows taller (90' ). They should form the climax forest and replace the Sawtooth Oaks as the forest matured.

You' re correct that planting foreign species of plants has changed our environment. Common grass and dandelions are just 2 examples of introduced species. Unfortunately; we have lost so many of our original food trees that something needs to be planted to fill the nitch. American Chestnuts were a major food source lost this century. Chinese Chestnuts could fill some of the need as they' re generally resistant to blight. We live in a world so changed from the original. Logging cleared the best trees which just happened to be oaks, walnuts, hickories, cherry and chestnut. Just the trees that wildlife needed the most. The trees that grew back tended to be early successional trees like birch and poplar. The forests which we think of as old today are not comparable to those that we lost.

Wildlife has adapted by eating farm crops to make up the shortage. Deer (at least in my area) have expanded to areas that they never existed in before land clearing. Imported wildlife (Pheasants, hares etc.) were introduced. Imported fish (Rainbow trout, salmon, brown trout, carp) were released and are now some of our most prized trophies.

We' re planting clovers, alfalfa, trefoil. In fact, most of the crops we' re recommending on this forum are imports. It' s wise to know the effect of planting/introducing/changing anything in our " natural" environment but the positives of providing food sources have to be weighed against future problems. Some species (eg. Norway Maple) I won' t plant, but so many others are only filling holes left by the loss of our natives.

Dan O.

I found this quote in an article about the effect of the Chestnut blight on the Eastern US forest canopy:

" Plant pathogens can equally overwhelm an entire ecosystem. The chestnut blight fungus arrived in New York City in the late 19th century on nursery stock from Asia and in less than fifty years had spread over 225 million acres of the eastern U.S., destroying virtually every chestnut tree. Because chestnut had comprised a quarter or more of the canopy of tall trees in many forests, the effects on the entire ecosystem were staggering, although not all were obvious. For example, several insect species that live only on the chestnut are now extinct or endangered. A less predictable result is an increase in the oak wilt disease in many native oak species, since the trees that replaced many of the chestnuts were red oaks, which are particularly susceptible to the blight."

Dan O.