Quercus macrocarpa
Bur or mossycup oak is a the common oak found growing in the Black Hills, producing acorns favored by wild turkey, blue jays, and others for food. These tiny July acorns will disappear in a hurry into blue jay caches once they ripen in the fall.
Curiously, I found that the word acorn is not a contraction of "oak" and "corn" as is commonly believed. It is actually an Old English word "aecern" meaning berry or fruit.
The first variant of the well known proverb is attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales we struggled with in some high school English class! According to the Oxford English dictionary,
Quoth Chaucer in 1374:
Bur or mossycup oak is a the common oak found growing in the Black Hills, producing acorns favored by wild turkey, blue jays, and others for food. These tiny July acorns will disappear in a hurry into blue jay caches once they ripen in the fall.
Curiously, I found that the word acorn is not a contraction of "oak" and "corn" as is commonly believed. It is actually an Old English word "aecern" meaning berry or fruit.
The first variant of the well known proverb is attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales we struggled with in some high school English class! According to the Oxford English dictionary,
Quoth Chaucer in 1374:
'as an ook cometh of a litel spyr"
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