Evaluating the potential for dendrochronological analysis of live oak (Quercus virginiana Mill.) from the urban and rural environment—An explorative study

Live oak (Quercus virginiana Mill.) is a long lived, broadleaf, evergreen species native to the lower Coastal Plain of the southern and southeastern United States and is frequently planted in the urban environment. However, live oak has received limited attention for its potential for dendrochronological analyses possibly because its growth-ring boundaries may be less defined due to the absence of a distinct dormancy period. The objective of this explorative study was to determine whether live oak rings in both urban and historic trees could be accurately identified and measured for dendrochronological applications. One hundred urban live oaks were assessed as well as four cross-sectional specimens from historic sites in the southeastern United States. Age of all cored live oak ranged from 7 to 29 (average = 16.8 rings), while cross-sections were taken from trees with an average age of 175 years. A chronology was created from cores that had the highest interseries correlations (n = 27), resulting in an average interseries correlation of 0.654. The analysis of live oak cross sections revealed that the rings on live oak are very faint and barely discernible, delimited mainly by a faint row of earlywood vessels with no or barely visible terminal parenchyma. Rings on these sections were erratic (i.e., fading out along the circumference) and non-concentric (i.e., a particular ring could be both wide and narrow at certain points along the circumference) so that any attempt to measure the rings on opposing radii would have produced meaningless results. However, based on the results of this study, we conclude that the dendrochronological analysis of live oak is possible with careful sample preparation and analysis and that results would be reliable, even for urban trees. Results of this study suggest that urban tree-ring series with higher interseries correlations were more vigorous than those with lower values, suggesting that urban environmental stresses related to individual sites may decrease the usefulness of crossdating techniques for evaluating annual rings on younger, urban trees.