Chinkapin Oak (Quercus muehlenbergii)

Chinkapin Oak is a most lovely member of the White Oak subgroup that has a good sized native range from the southeast tip of Ontario to some spots in New York & north New Jersey & Pennsylvania down to northwest Florida to east Texas and a little into northeast Mexico in the mountains, up eastern Oklahoma & Kansas through half of Iowa to barely into southern Wisconsin through southern Michigan back to Ontario. It grows about 1 foot/year and lives about 200 years. It grows in well-drained to dry soils that are barely acid to well-alkaline the most, but it can be found in moist or draining wet soils near watercourses or in bottomlands. I first saw some growing in dry, dolomitic limestone soil near Batavia in northeast Illinois in the 1980's, but I also found three good specimens in slightly acid, moist soil near a creek in Downingtown, Pennsylvania in 2019. This species is one of those plants that is found only in certain spots and is not wide-spread all over the place as Northern Red Oak or Red Maple in much of the eastern USA. Its leaves are 4 to 7 inches long by 1 to 4 inches wide with coarse roundly pointed teeth and some white hair below. (Its leaves are similar to the Chestnut Oak of the Appalachian Region; the Swamp White Oak, and the Swamp Chestnut Oak of the South, the latest that I have never seen.) Cinkapin's bark is much like that of the White Oak; that is ashy gray to gray-brown and scaly. Its acorns are sessile, brown to almost black, ovoid, about 0.5 to 0.8 inches long with the lower half in a bowl-shaped scaly cup. These small acorns, smaller than most of the White Oak Group, are very high value to birds and mammals and it hosts a large number of beneficial insects as other oaks do. A few large, diverse nurseries and some native plant nurseries sell it. I've only seen one planted in the Morton Arboretum landscape; otherwise, I've only seen wild ones.

[ Reply to this comment | (1) ]