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White Oak

Quercus alba

Summary 5

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 Nova Scotia 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

Quercus alba typically reaches heights of 80–100 feet 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. 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. The bark is a light ash-gray and peels somewhat from the top, bottom and/or sides

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 ft in circumference at the base and 16 ft in circumference 4 ft above the ground. The tree was 75 ft tall, and its branches spread over 125 ft 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.

Sources and Credits

  1. (c) abirks, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by abirks
  2. (c) raulhperez1, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
  3. (c) Claire O'Neill, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Claire O'Neill
  4. (c) Sandy Wolkenberg, some rights reserved (CC BY), uploaded by Sandy Wolkenberg
  5. Adapted by Tom Pollard from a work by (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quercus_alba

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