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New York Champion White Oak Quercus alba Beech Family — Oak Genus Chatham Center, New York Circumference = 229 inches (19.1 feet) Height = 104 feet Average Crown Spread = 96 feet Total Points: 357 nominated: January 1984 by: Frank Pierce

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.

Identification & Culture

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.

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, 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.

This impressive specimen is perhaps 300 years old, and currently grows beside a house in a wooded area north of Chatham Center in the Hudson Valley. Unlike the classic white oak, this tree is taller than wide, perhaps because it has grown most of its life in forest instead of field.

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TERRA: The Earth Restoration and Reforestation Alliance — www.championtrees.org — updated 8/14/2003