California Scrub Oaks Recover From Wildfire in Murrieta, California
391 views · Published 2 August 2012 · 4:49 · Indexed 9 October 2026
Channel: Melvin Wei · 2012 · Science & Technology
The California scrub oak, or Quercus dumosa, is a chaparral plant with attractive lush foliage that usually takes the form of a shrub, but can also grow into a medium-sized tree; although the literature seems to state that the tree form grows only up to 4 meters, the latter specimens in this video alone seems to be 5-6 meters tall easily. California scrub oaks can grow up to elevations of 2100 meters. A fire swept through this area, the Santa Rosa Plateau in Murrieta, California, two years ago. In this video, both the scrub and tree forms are displayed with burn damage: the scrub form leaves charred "staves" behind, so to speak, while the tree form will have a grayed-out, dead zone where it caught on fire. Intuitively one would think that tree fires would incinerate all of the foliage and branches on a tree but I have seen that this is not always the case; sometimes fires burn only small portions of tree crowns and leave one side or even the majority of the foliage intact. The regrowth of the scrub form is more unconventional-looking because of the long, straight branches that resprout from the roots around the larger, thicker dead charred branches.
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