A One-Leaf Tree

I recently planted three tiny oak saplings in the open common area next to our driveway. These are Gambel oaks, or scrub oaks. They are native to northern New Mexico and when I saw them for sale for $14 each at the local native plant nursery, I knew they had to come home with me. So they did.

Nice healthy specimens, although tiny

Gambel oaks can be shrubby thicket-like trees or they can be pruned to grow with a single trunk. They are tough survivors on dry, sandy soils. I thought the conditions in the untended, unirrigated, dry patch of land next to our driveway would suit these native oaks.

But when I dug into the baked sand there, I discovered that under a few inches of sand was caliche. Caliche is a hardened natural cement. It's sedimentary calcium carbonate that binds gravel and silt together and makes, yes, real cement. 

Three Gambel oaks awaiting planting

I amended what I could scrape out with plenty of compost. I made the holes as big as I could. My friend Lucy, younger and fitter than I am, came with her pickaxe and did amazing excavation work. I watered everything well. I added bark mulch to keep the baked sand layer cool. I planted the three small saplings and said a prayer that they would grow with natural grace and health in what is basically hardened alkaline cement bowls.

Then, two days after planting, fierce wind and driving hail pelted the new plantings, stripping off that healthy foliage, and leaving one of the new trees with just a single leaf. One pathetic leaf on a toothpick stem. I removed it from its planting hole, potted it up and put pinecones -- my preferred mulching material -- around it to hold the stem upright. 

This is sad

I bought another small oak at the nursery to replace it, and thought. . . if the damaged one-leaf tree lives, it will be a miracle. The other two damaged saplings remained in the field; they at least had held on to most of their leaves. This one, safely potted in my hospital bay for sick plants, seemed to still live, but looked pathetic. That was in late May. In early June it was still green at least.

Then, by mid June there was suddenly tons of new growth. Lots of little oak leaves emerged. Just like that and all at once.

   On the left -- June 3: one leaf remaining after a hailstorm. 

On the right --  June 10: lots and lots of new growth.   

Suddenly this sapling is almost as leafy as it was when first bought. I had already replaced it, unsure whether this one would live. Now I have not three, but four Gambel oaks and need to find a place where this re-habbed one could be planted.

Can I find some place other than a hole in cement?