The White Oak, also called Stave Oak, is the classic member of the Oak family—its most common and important member, contributing three quarters of the wood sold as oak. The White Oak is the most important hardwood tree native to North America, and grows widely throughout the eastern U.S. This sturdy tree has wide-spreading branches a rounded crown, and a trunk irregularly divided into spreading, often horizontal, stout branches.
White Oak wood is one of our best high-quality hardwoods, and is used for innumerable purposes, including furniture, flooring, interior finishing, tool handles, barrel staves, railroad ties, and fuel.
The White Oak acorns are an important source of food for wildlife, particularly the gray squirrel, which plants many of them, thus assuring future oak forests. Diminishing squirrel populations means fewer white oaks in the future.
In colonial times, the White Oak's first place use was for shipbuilding, then for charcoal. Its bark was used for tanning, made into a tea to treat tonsilitis. Native Americans and colonists also ate the acorns, making them palatable by boiling them in water. The Russian Orthodox Church uses White Oak in their Christmas celebration by swinging branches with burning leaves into the sky as a reminder of the star the three wise men followed.
Identification
Size: The White Oak is a medium to large sized tree that attains a height of 75 to 100 feet, and two to four feet in diameter, usually with a short, stocky trunk and wide-spreading crown with thick limbs.
Range: The White Oak is found from southern Ontario and Maine to central Minnesota, and south to northern Florida and eastern Texas.
Habitat: Although found on many soil types, it reaches its best development on deep, rich, moist, well-drained soils, such as higher bottom lands.
Leaves are simple, alternate, 5 to 9 inches long, 2 to 4 inches wide, oval in outline, or broader near the apex, tapering to base. Leaves are divided into 3 to 9, usually 7, blunt-pointed, finger-like lobes. Mature leaves are deep green above and whitish or gray-green beneath, and turn red or brown in the autumn, often remaining attached in winter.
Flowers appear in May, and are separately male and female. Pollen-bearing flowers occur on the old growth in drooping catkin tassles 2 to 3 inches long. Acorn-producing blossoms occur as short spikes in small clusters on new growth.
Fruit is a short-stalked, egg-shaped acorn maturing in one season. The light brown nuts are 3/4 to 1 1/4 inch long, finely hairy, seated in a warty, shallow cup that encloses the top 1/4 of the nut. These nuts are sweet and relished by wild animals.
Bark is light grayish-white, shallowly fissured, variable in texture, and peels off in numerous scales or small rectangular blocks, often loose.
Twigs are light gray, smooth, dotted with light lenticels.
Buds are alternate, egg-shaped, blunt-pointed, redish-brown, clustered at the end of twigs.
Wood is heavy, hard, dense, strong, close-grained, light brown, and very durable.
Similar Species: Overcup and Burr Oak leaves have deeper divisions and their acorn cups are unique. In winter, end-bud stipules differentiate the Burr Oak. Swamp Oak has 1 to 3 inch acorn stalks, and leaves have shallow lobes.
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