by Jo Ann McCracken-Redding
Oaks and jays both evolved around 60 million years ago in Southeast Asia, where they forged a partnership that has spanned continents and millennia. Today, they’re teaming up in North America and right here in South Carolina, where the jay species is the blue jay.
What’s this duo up to?
Of course, preservation of their respective species. In The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees, Doug Tallamy explains the interdependency of the oak and the blue jay, which he calls “the undisputed champion among acorn dispersers.”1
For the jay, nutritious acorns are the perfect size to collect and store for winter. They bury them—one at a time!—sometimes over a mile from the mother oak. The distance the acorn is carried beyond the parent canopy increases the odds it will take root and survive as a sapling in a location with less competition for light, nutrients, and water.
Tallamy reveals the critical conditions of the oak–blue jay teamwork:
- Two evolutionary adaptations make the blue jay a champion worker: a hook at the end of its beak that rips open acorns and an expanded esophagus that holds up to five acorns during flight.
- A single jay can gather and bury up to 4,500 acorns each fall, but only remembers where about a quarter of them are buried. A fortunate consequence is that the abandoned acorns may then become saplings that grow into mighty oaks.
- Each jay plants about 3,360 oak trees a year in its seven-to-17-year lifespan.
In areas where oaks are ravaged by disease, the jay provides another vital service by gathering the more abundant and desirable acorns from oaks that haven’t succumbed. By transporting to new areas and seeding the disease-resistant acorns, the jay helps to ensure healthy oak progeny.
How does this oak–blue jay partnership impact us?
The preservation and proliferation of oaks work to our advantage because the oak is considered a keystone plant, playing a critical role in our food web and ecosystem. According to Tallamy, “Oaks support more biodiversity, sequester more carbon, and manage the watershed better than any other tree in most parts of North America.”2
This story of seeds, wings, and saplings interacting in an age-old partnership is the quintessential native plant story. The natural world works in cycles and patterns remembered and practiced by plants and animals over millennia. It’s our calling to protect our native plants and ecosystems with passion and awe.
1 Douglas W. Tallamy, The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees, 2021, pp. 14-16.
2 Tallamy, How Can I Help? Saving Nature with Your Yard, 2025, pp. 222-223.
