It’s the oldest living plant in California, and it’s in the Inland Empire.
Nestled among the Jurupa Hills, this Palmer’s oak is estimated to be at least 13,000 years old. It’s not much to look at, true. Rather than a tree, it’s a thicket, about 3 feet high, spreading about 90 feet.
What it’s got going for it is antiquity.
The oak would have sprouted near the end of the Pleistocene Epoch. That’s about a millennium before the end of the Ice Age.
It’s hard to even understand how old that is. But let’s try.
This oak was already 3,000 years old when human agriculture began in the Middle East, 9,000 years old when the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest written story on Earth, was composed.
It was 10,000 years old when the Old Testament’s King Solomon ruled, older still when Christ, Buddha and Muhammad walked the Earth.
Put another way, Jurupa Valley’s oak was already ancient when Methuselah was in short pants.
Ever since reading about the oak last fall, it’s been a goal of mine to see this wonder of the Inland Empire.
On Tuesday morning, I did.
Two advocates led me on a hike to the slightly remote location. The invitation was extended because of a development plan that has alarmed many. I’ll come back to that.
My guides were Aaron Echols, conservation chair of the California Native Plant Society’s Riverside/San Bernardino chapter, and Jennifer Iyer, an avid hiker, resource educator and former reporter for our organization. Both live in Jurupa Valley.
We met on the eastern terminus of 20th Street near the cement plant, then hiked in along well-worn trails. The oak is on the far side of a steep hill.
We didn’t approach it. Getting to it requires billy goat abilities. We climbed the next hill over and observed from there.
Like I said, this oak is not a tree, strong and tall, with a broad canopy offering shade. It’s more like a low shrub, a patch of dark green midway up the hill.
Echols and Iyer refer to it as the ancient oak.
“Not all oaks are trees,” Echols pointed out.
That makes the Palmer’s oak harder to love. It isn’t a towering redwood, inspiring awe at its height and mass, or the Lone Cypress in Monterey, which you can admire for its tenacity.
Instead, it’s a shrub that keeps regenerating. Because few in Jurupa Valley have ever seen it, getting the public to rally around it won’t be easy, Iyer admitted.
The oak was studied in 2009 by researchers at UC Riverside and UC Davis, who estimated its age based on growth rings. They said the oak consisted of about 70 stem clusters and in earlier times was probably more extensive.
Among long-lived California plants, the oak has redwoods beat by 10,000 years and bristlecone pines by 8,000 years. Our oak dethroned a 12,000-year-old creosote bush in Palm Springs that was previously thought to be California’s oldest plant.
Am I surprised that the two oldest plants in California reside in the IE? Not really. You’ve gotta be hardy to make it here.
The oak has neighbors. An older residential neighborhood lies to the north. Residents can look up and see the ancient oak if they need some perspective on that day’s troubles.
A couple of sprawling, white, flat-roofed logistics buildings are just beyond. On the other side are the aforementioned cement plant, rock quarry and small logistics buildings. In the distance is the 60 Freeway.
If Richland Communities has its way, many more neighbors will arrive. The company is behind Rio Vista, a proposed master-planned community on 917 acres that would bring 1,697 residences.
Also, business parks and light industry, more than 1 million square feet of each, plus two elementary schools, three parks, an equestrian center and open space. 20th Street, which dead-ends on the west and east sides of the development, would be punched through.
The environmental impact report calls for a 259-foot construction buffer around the oak, which advocates worry is insufficient, especially because the roots may extend farther.
The Planning Commission had its first hearing on the EIR on Wednesday night, asked for more studies and more information, and continued the hearing to July 10.
While the land is privately owned, people make use of it for dirt biking, horse riding, hiking and more. Signs prohibit off-roading, but a couple of abandoned vehicles and a few car parts are evidence it takes place.
Graffiti adorns a boulder next to the Palmer’s oak. On the adjacent hill where we stood was a weathered love seat. Nearby was a mattress, leaning against a rock.
Iyer and I continued the hike westward along dirt trails through the sage scrub, brittlebush and sunflowers. We passed a few makeshift wooden ramps for dirt biking, the occasional piece of trash.
Yards off, an older woman was walking with a cane and a shade umbrella. A man pulling a small wagon, accompanied by two big dogs, was even farther off, heading the opposite direction.
We heard birds and the buzz of insects. Tiny lizards skittered across the path. A cottontail bunny bounded off. As we neared the end of the wild land and the start of red tile roofs, Shadow Rock Park and Jurupa Valley proper, Iyer pointed to the hills.
Far off, I could discern the profile of Eddy. That’s the steel sculpture of a mammoth on the hill outside the Jurupa Mountains Discovery Center, overlooking freeway traffic on the 60.
Eddy and the Palmer’s oak are kin, in a way. Except one is a representation and the other is real.
I thought of something Iyer had said earlier about the oak.
“It’s amazing to think that when this was just acorns, Columbian mammoths and saber-toothed cats were wandering the area,” she’d enthused. “All the stuff you see at the La Brea Tar Pits was out here at the same time.”
Isn’t that something.
Let’s not let a 13,000-year-old oak die on our watch.
David Allen writes Friday, Sunday and Wednesday, three more acorns. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on X.
