page_title: Quercus alba
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Quercus alba / Description
caption_attribution_description: Foliage of the White oak - Quercus alba. Tortworth arboretum - 1st November 2005
context_page_description: Quercus alba, the white oak, is one of the preeminent hardwoods of eastern and central North America. It is a long-lived oak, native to eastern and central North America and found from Minnesota, Ontario, Quebec, and southern Maine south as far as northern Florida and eastern Texas. Specimens have been documented to be over 450 years old.
  Although called a white oak, it is very unusual to find an individual specimen with white bark; the usual colour is a light grey. The name comes from the colour of the finished wood. In the forest it can reach a magnificent height and in the open it develops into a massive broad-topped tree with large branches striking out at wide angles.
context_section_description: Q. alba typically reaches heights of 80 to 100 feet (24–30 m) at maturity, and its canopy can become quite massive as its lower branches are apt to extend far out laterally, parallel to the ground. Trees growing in a forest will become much taller than ones in an open area which develop to be short and massive. The Mingo Oak was the tallest known white oak at 145 feet before it was felled in 1938. it  It is not unusual for a white oak tree to be as wide as it is tall, but specimens growing at high altitudes may only become small shrubs.
  White oak may live 200 to 300 years, with some even older specimens known. The Wye Oak in Wye Mills, Maryland was estimated to be over 450 years old when it finally fell in a thunderstorm in 2002.
  Another noted white oak was the Great White Oak in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, estimated to have been over 600 years old when it died in 2016. The tree measured 25 feet (7.6 m) in circumference at the base and 16 feet (4.9 m) in circumference four feet (1.2 m) above the ground. The tree was 75 feet (23 m) tall, and its branches spread over 125 feet (38 m) from tip to tip. The oak, claimed to be the oldest in the United States, began showing signs of poor health in the mid-2010s. The tree was taken down in 2017.
  Sexual maturity begins at around 20 years, but the tree does not produce large crops of acorns until its 50th year and the amount varies from year to year. Acorns deteriorate quickly after ripening, the germination rate being only 10% for six-month-old seeds. As the acorns are prime food for insects and other animals, all may be consumed in years of small crops, leaving none that would become new trees.
  The bark is a light ash-gray and peels somewhat from the top, bottom and/or sides.
  In spring the young leaves are of a delicate, silvery pink and covered with a soft, blanket-like down.  The petioles are short, and the leaves which cluster close to the ends of the shoots are pale green and downy with the result that the entire tree has a misty, frosty look.  This condition continues for several days, passing through the opalescent changes of soft pink, silvery white and finally yellow green.
  The leaves grow to be 5 to 8.5 inches (13–22 cm) long and 2.75 to 4.5 inches (7.0–11.4 cm) wide and have a deep glossy green upper surface.  They usually turn red or brown in autumn, but depending on climate, site, and individual tree genetics, some trees are nearly always red, or even purple in autumn.  Some brown, dead leaves may remain on the tree throughout winter until very early spring. The lobes can be shallow, extending less than halfway to the midrib, or deep and somewhat branching.
  The acorns are usually sessile, and grow to 0.5 to 1 inch (13–25 mm) in length, falling in early October.
  Quercus alba is sometimes confused with the swamp white oak, a closely related species, and the bur oak.  The white oak hybridizes freely with the bur oak, the post oak, and the chestnut oak.
  Bark: Light gray, varying to dark gray and to white; shallow fissured and scaly.  Branchlets at first bright green, later reddish-green and finally light gray. A distinguishing feature of this tree is that a little over halfway up the trunk the bark tends to form overlapping scales that are easily noticed and aid in identification.
  Wood: Light brown with paler sapwood; strong, tough, heavy, fine-grained and durable.  Specific gravity, 0.7470; weight of one cubic foot, 46.35 lbs; weight of one cubic meter 770 kg.
  Winter buds: Reddish brown, obtuse, one-eighth of an inch long.
  Leaves: Alternate, five to nine inches long, three to four inches wide.  Obovate or oblong, seven to nine-lobed, usually seven-lobed with rounded lobes and rounded sinuses; lobes destitute of bristles; sinuses sometimes deep, sometimes shallow.  On young trees the leaves are often repand.  They come out of the bud conduplicate, are bright red above, pale below, and covered with white tomentum; the red fades quickly and they become silvery greenish white and shiny;  when full grown they are thin, bright yellow green, shiny or dull above, pale, glaucous o
caption: White oak foliage
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