Rose City Bluff has about ten small oak trees east of what we call the Overlook, at NE 66th Street. In December, when other trees have dropped or will soon drop their leaves, these oaks hang on to their leaves. The name for this phenomenon is marcescence. Oak leaf marcescence is senescence without abscission. Why this happens we don’t really know. Is it stubbornness? Defiance? Maybe reluctance, as suggested by Robert Frost’s poem, Reluctance, published in 1913:
Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ‘Whither?’
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
Rose City Bluff Restoration 