Cork Trees

Here in Evora, we are in the middle of cork oak tree country. The megaliths we visited today happen to be in the middle of a cork tree farm, so I finally got to see cork trees up close. These are long lived trees, fortunately, because you first have to wait about 50 years before you harvest any cork in order not to injure the tree. After that you can harvest cork every nine years. You can also harvest only up to where the branches start to spread from the trunk. To keep track of their harvesting, the trunk of the tree is numbered in the year it is harvested, with the last digit of that year. Since they do it every nine years, the single digit works for them to track the harvest year--how convenient of the tree to cooperate in that way!

The first harvest produces the worst quality cork because the virgin bark is the roughest. After that it grows back smoother and subsequent harvests can be used to make finer quality cork. With the advent of plastic corks, the income from these trees was reduced, so they are developing new processing methods in order to use cork for new applications, many of which will likely surprise you as it has us.

I have a picture of a fairly recently harvested cork tree (the "1" tells us it was harvested in 2011), a closeup of the trunk and bark, a view of a field of cork trees (not very distinguished looking--a bit scrappy). Finally I have a picture of a shop in Evora that shows some of the new products being produced from cork, many that you would never imagine. The hats and caps to the right of that picture, the postcards on the stand to the left, the purses hanging up and the wine bottles in the basket at the bottom left are all made of cork! I sent my first cork postcard to my dad yesterday.