Extreme measures

I read somewhere (wish I could remember where) that this species of oak tree handles drought by simply shedding branches! I don’t think it was meant as a joke, but doesn’t that seem extreme? A few years back, about when this current drought cycle started, I was surprised one day to notice all the leaves on the road when I got out of the car to open one of our many gates. The trees around the gate were dropping their leaves with abandon. It was July, certainly a long time before the leaves should be falling. At the same time, there was a big scare concerning Sudden Oak Death striking many trees near California’s coast. Before I found out that SOD was confined to a different variety of oak, I thought that’s what we had here.

It seems to me that dropping leaves is a much more sensible way to handle drought. It makes you wonder—what are these trees thinking anyway?