oak

Shingle Oak is a unique tree that diverges from traditional oaks you may think of in the landscape. Learn more...

The 86th Ohio Plant Diagnostic Workshop will be held on Friday, September 6 at OSU's Secrest Arboretum in Wooster. Join us for samples, walks and talks - and a fine lunch. From oak wilt and a discussion of beech leaf diseases, to what has the Season of 2019 wrought.

  This week let us do some sleuthing. I came upon this tree yesterday in Orrville, Ohio in the Smucker’s Fitness Walk path. The leaf told me something, but first, let us look at the tell-tale terminal buds: clustered. 

  This is typical of oaks, the genus Quercus.  

  And the leaves obviously suggest oak-hood, in this case with rounded lobes without a bristle tip, thus the…

  White oak group

  Oaks in the white oak group tend to hybridize freely, unlike with the black or red oak group (pin oaks, black oaks, scarlet...

A great value added travel joy to the nature and nurture plants-persons within us is trying to figure out the identity of unfamiliar plants. At a Vermont rest area this weekend there were some beautiful oaks (Quercus spp.) with long, maybe 10” long, leaves.  They were in the white oak group, which is a group of oaks with rounded leaf lobes and acorns that develop in one year. Oaks in this group do tend to hybridize readily with each other, but not hybridize with the red/black oak group that have bristle hairs on the tips of the leaf lobes, and which take two years to develop...