Willa

“In most U.S. counties, oaks, cherries, willows, birches, hickories, pines, and maples are producing the vast numbers and types of insects that support animal populations. These tree genera are keystone plants because they play the same support role that the keystone in a Roman arch plays.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees

“The thick mat of leaf litter that characterizes forests with numerous oaks acts like a sponge when it rains and is most valuable when it rains hard (Sweeney and Blaine 2016). The water from a 2-inch downpour, for example—more than 54,000 gallons per acre—is captured almost entirely by an oak forest’s leaf litter and the organic humus it creates. Litter and humus don’t hold this water indefinitely, but they do corral it on-site just long enough for it to seep into the ground, replenishing the water table on which so many of us depend. In areas with no leaf litter, the same 2-inch rainstorm causes a flood.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees

“There is not an “I” and “the neurons in my brain.” They are the same thing. An individual is a process: complex, tightly integrated.”
― Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

“As water that is held on-site by leaf litter seeps through soil pores on its way to the water table, it is purified. Excessive nitrogen and phosphorus loads that come from lawn and farm fertilizers are filtered out of the water, as are heavy metals, pesticides, oil, and other pollutants.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees