10,000 Trees Coming to White Oak

A Montgomery County initiative to restore the white oak tree to Silver Spring's White Oak neighborhood launches this summer.

The Park and Planning Commission campaign to plant 10,000 saplings in the 3.15 square mile census designated area has been dubbed, "Make White Oak White Again."

Less than 200 years ago, vast areas of deciduous forest, nine-tenths massive white oak, stretched across Montgomery County. State arborists say there are less than 100 white oaks in White Oak today.

"It's time to wipe out the urban blight and bring the whites back to White Oak," commission secretary Dr. Quercus Alba said at a planting ceremony.

The name White Oak was chosen in 1899 for the first suburban development in the Silver Spring area because it was so dense with the species. Extensive clear-cutting and urban development subsequently decimated the white oak.

"Over the last decades the blacks, reds and chestnuts have taken over a neighborhood where whites once ruled supreme. We are taking it back!" Alba declared, referring to the expansion of black, red and chestnut oak species in the region.

While the white oak initiative is overwhelmingly supported in the county, some local leaders take issue with its name. "Although called a white oak, it is very unusual to find an individual specimen with white bark; the usual color is a light gray," said Dave Golden, chairman of the Make East Montgomery Great Again PAC.