In many countries people collect fx. cones and other kind of seeds of trees and get paid. Then the volontary people plant trees every year. Now we have to act in some way.
This small, shrubby deciduous tree (3-9 meters tall) with palmate leaves that resemble a maple’s grows on steep, rocky terrain on four of the Ouachita Mountains in four Arkansas counties. Populations have avoided logging because of the unfavorable terrain and growing conditions. Six populations of a few hundred individuals each have been identified. While some botanists debated whether this tree was a unique species or a variant of the Shumard oak (Q. shumardii), a consensus was reached that these populations constitute a separate species. This oak is considered endangered by the IUCN because its small population size means any large-impact disturbance could put this species below a viable threshold.
North America has a rich history of forest change due to climate change following the last Ice Age, and due to more current changes following European settlement. All this change has resulted in pockets of very interesting, often half-forgotten trees smattered throughout the continent. I wanted to give them a little recognition.
But I had a problem: How do you define rare? You could call a species rare if it has a very small range size. But with that criterion, you would miss some species that are rare, because some trees can be widespread but extremely rare within their range. Is it the smallest number of individuals? There are so many species for which this number is unknown. Does rare implicate the trees that have experienced the most decline? Again, this may or may not have been measured. I decided to use the IUCN Red List as a guide, because range, population size, and decline are taken into account cohesively to qualify for listing. Botanists often use the term “rare” to denote an uncommon species that is not necessarily declining or at major risk of decline. In this case, I have chosen trees that are at major risk of decline, either because their numbers are so few that if some die off randomly, the entire population’s ability to reproduce will be affected, or because of some external factor exacerbating decline, or both.
