Water Oak Tree Information


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Water Oak grows in the following 24 states and provinces:

Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia


Information about Water Oak:


More information about Water Oak may be found here.

The Quercus Palustris is commonly known as the Pin Oak, Spanish Oak, Swamp Oak, Swamp Spanish Oak as well as Water Oak.

The currently accepted scientific name of pin oak is Quercus palustris Muenchh. . It has been placed within the subgenus Erythrobalanus, or red (black) oak group . There are no recognized varieties, subspecies, or forms. Pin oak hybridizes with the following species : x Q. coccinea (scarlet oak) x Q. imbricaria (shingle oak): Q. Xexacta Trel. x Q. phellos (willow oak): Q. Xschochiana Dieck x Q. rubra (northern red oak): Q. Xcolumnaris Laughlin x Q. shumardii (Shumard oak): Q. Xmutabilis Palmer & Steyerm. x Q. velutina (black oak): Q. Xvaga Palmer & Steyerm.

Pin oak occurs primarily along major rivers and on glacial till plains in the north-central and eastern United States. It is distributed from southwestern New England; west to extreme southern Ontario, southern Michigan, northern Illinois, and Iowa; south to Missouri, east Kansas, and northeastern Oklahoma; and east to central Arkansas, Tennessee, central North Carolina, and Virginia .

Pin oak is found in bottomland hardwood communities. There are four variants of the SAF cover type pin oak-sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua): white oak (Quercus alba)-pin oak-sweetgum, pin oak-American elm (Ulmus americana), pin oak-red maple (Acer rubrum), and pure pin oak . Nearly pure even-aged stands of pin oak are known as "pin oak flats" . A pin oak-cherrybark oak (Quercus falcata var. pagodifolia) community occurs in the Mississippi River Valley in Illinois . The following publication lists pin oak as a dominant species: Forests of the Illinoian Till Plain of southwestern Ohio

Some of the information provided here is attributed to:Carey, Jennifer H. 1992. Quercus palustris. In: Fire Effects Information System, [Online]. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory (Producer). , available at the USDA Fire Effects Information System (FEIS) website