Botanical Name:
Quercus rubra
Family Name:
Fagaceae / oak and beech
Description:
The red oak is a medium sized, deciduous tree with a broad-spreading, often irregular crown. The tree has a moderate to fast growth rate, and is tolerant of a wide range of conditions, making it particularly suitable in urban landscaping.
Size:
50 – 75′
Habitat and Range:
The red oak is one of the most abundant oak species in North America, found across the eastern and central United States and southeast and south-central Canada.
Attributes:
Red oaks provide attractive foliage year-round, with leaves emerging pink-red in the spring, turning a lustrous dark green in the summer, and a bright to russet red in the fall. Leaves of red oaks have 7-11 toothed lobes with sharply pointed tips (distinguishing them from the rounded leaf tips of the white oaks).
Wildlife Value:
The leaves and abundant acorns of red oak are a favorite food for wildlife, including squirrels and chipmunks, blue-jays, red-headed woodpeckers, wild turkeys, mice, and deer.
Did you Know?
• Red oaks can live for up to 500 years, growing as much as two feet in a year for the first 10 years of their life.
• Native Americans used red oak for medicines to treat a variety of ailments, including digestive disorders, respiratory diseases, and skin infections.
Benefits to Our Community (based on carbon dioxide sequestered, storm water runoff avoided, and air pollution removed each year):
Over the next 15 years, this tree will give back $1,815 worth of benefits to our community.
