OAKLAND, Calif. — In the beginning, before stylized images of oak trees started appearing on T-shirts, bumper stickers and even Mayor Libby Schaaf’s election-night earrings in November, there were actually oak woodlands in Oakland.

And while this is one of the largest cities in America named after a tree, these days there are very few of the oaks left.

Thus began the fledgling campaign to “re-oak” Oakland, which started on a recent weekend when a team of volunteers planted an inaugural stand of 72 saplings of coast live oaks in plastic buckets in a West Oakland park.

“Names are a powerful way to think about a place,” said Walter J. Hood, a landscape architect and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who lives and works in Oakland and came up with the idea of resurrecting the city’s forgotten groves.