Decomposition in Progress

The white oak tree beside the watershed is dying.

Its bark is separating from the sapwood in vertical strips.

The cambium layer has ceased to function.

Water is no longer traveling from roots to crown.

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The leaves fell three weeks earlier than neighboring trees.

They are brown, not the yellow or red produced by color-changing chemicals.

They are dry. They contain no green pigment.

The stems detached without the corky layer that forms in healthy leaf drop.

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Fungi are present on the trunk's north side.

They are bracket fungi, shelf-like mushrooms.

Their fruiting bodies are orange and yellow, overlapping.

They are decomposing the wood fibers inside the trunk.

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Bark beetles have made galleries under the bark.

The galleries are serpentine, branching from a central channel.

Each groove is two millimeters wide.

The larvae ate the inner bark as they moved outward from where eggs were laid.

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The tree's root system extends approximately fifteen meters from the trunk.

The fine feeder roots, less than two millimeters in diameter, are dying first.

They are desiccating. They are brittle when touched.

The fungal networks that connected them to surrounding trees are breaking down.

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Woodpeckers are arriving daily.

They are pileated woodpeckers, the large kind with red crests.

They drill rectangular holes to access beetle larvae.

Wood chips accumulate at the tree's base, pale and fresh.

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The tree is not fighting. The tree is not surrendering.

The tree is undergoing cellular breakdown.

Chemical processes are stopping. Structural integrity is failing.

This is what occurs when vessels no longer conduct water upward.

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In six months, more branches will fall.

In two years, the trunk will likely split.

In five years, the trunk will be mostly hollow.

In ten years, what remains will be unrecognizable as a tree.

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The oak is not a symbol of endurance.

The oak is not a lesson about time.

The oak is a specific organism, a white oak,

experiencing mortality at a specific location,

measured in wood density, moisture content, and fungal spread.

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This is decomposition.

This is what happens to trees.