Howdy from the original poster Yes, I did receive a lot of helpful responses, most (all?) of which were posted to the list, to some of which I responded outside the list.
And yes, my original question was poorly worded in the sense that I did not mean to imply post oak was not native to Texas. However, that seemed to have sparked an (unintended) interesting discussion about what the word means, prompting me to plead for excusing my non-ecologist ignorance on this forum. We are most interested in any insight you all here might have on why post oak -- at least the trees/leaves we measured last year -- performed (in terms of photosynthetic activity and heat + drought tolerance) better than water oak and southern red oak. There may be multiple reasons for that, but one thing we (naively?) thought about was whether post oak is/has better adapted to the Texas climate, which one could argue might stem from it having grown there for much longer than the other species ("native" vs. "not so native" ?). In that aspect, some of the links circulated are not that helpful. It appears to me that e.g. the USDA calls anything native that occurs in a state, albeit in niches, and then calls the species native to the whole state. As pointed out by one reply, post oak grows in a large area of Texas named after it, because it is the dominant tree species there. The other two species do not have that distinction. I received some anecdotal evidence from foresters -- related to mortality -- that confirm that post oak seems better adapted to Texas, but I am looking for hard evidence, if any. Thanks for your patience reading through this post, and thanks everyone for replying to my original inquiry ... though poorly worded. Best, Gunnar On 3/17/2012 05:41 PM, Wayne Tyson wrote: > Ecolog: > > Resetarits makes some excellent points. > > While I quite understand the resistance to using such "terms" as "squishy," I was trying to make a between-the-lines point: The term needs to match the phenomenon. > > Any term should meet the test of relevance and clarity, and everyone should recognize that "everything is context." Post-oaks, for example, worked as a term in my childhood because "everybody" "knew" what post-oak meant. "Native to Texas" is true, too, provided that the reader has the sense to know that that means that post-oaks occur within the political boundaries known as Texas. Exceptions, as necessary, should be noted by the writer where necessary, and by the reader, with the exception that a more elaborate explanation is necessary by the writer if the reader does not understand that the statement does not mean that post-oak is ONLY native to Texas. > > We should hear from the original poster regarding whether or not the original question has received relevant responses. I personally found the question vague, and therefore suspicious. But it did awaken some thoughts that should prove useful--IF there is follow-up to a conclusion, however conditioned and provisional. > > WT -- ----------------------------------- Dr. Gunnar W. Schade Department of Atmospheric Sciences Texas A&M University 1104 Eller O&M Building College Station, TX 77843-3150 e-mail: g...@geos.tamu.edu http://georesearch.tamu.edu/blogs/oaktreeproject/ ----------------------------------- "Climate change detonates the ideological scaffolding on which contemporary conservatism rests. There is simply no way to square a belief system that vilifies collective action and venerates total market freedom with a problem that demands collective action on an unprecedented scale and a dramatic reining in of the market forces that created and are deepening the crisis." Naomi Klein, November 2011