A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
975 entries
oak opening
The savanna-like landscape of scattered bur oaks and prairie grasses maintained by fire in presettlement Wisconsin and the upper Midwest. The oaks survived because their corky bark was armor against the annual burns. Leopold called bur oaks the shock troops sent by the invading forest to storm the prairie.
Etymology
“Oak” from Old English “ac”; “opening” from Old English “openung,” from “open.” Descriptive English compound, in use by 19th-century American settlers and surveyors to describe the savanna-like landscapes of the upper Midwest.