Quercus rubra, the northern red oak, is one of the most important timber trees of eastern North America.  Its native range extends from the Canadian Maritimes west across Ontario to Minnesota and southward to Arkansas, the southern Appalachians and North Carolina.  It is the namesake of the red oak group, characterized by acorns that take two seasons to mature and generally having toothed rather than rounded leaf lobes.  Among native oaks, it is one of the fastest growing in youth.  It inhabits a variety of environments but prefers rich and slightly acid soil and in less common on rocky, shaly ground.

Red oak as a young tree is rather coarse, gradually forming a rounded to slightly pyramidal crown when given ample room.   As the tree matures, it loses lower branches, evolving into a massive, open-crowned tree devoid of branches for up to 30-50 feet above ground.  In the wild, specimens can reach 120 to 140 feet in height, but typically only 75 feet under landscape conditions.  The massive trunk of a mature tree is a deep brown, broken with wide, flat, somewhat shiny, grey ridges.  Leaves open a fuzzy, pink-tinged white becoming smooth and dark green with shallowly-toothed bristly lobes.   The fall color is usually a deep red fading to light brown before dropping.   Unlike most natives, the leaf cycle of the red oak is controlled strictly by light and not dependent upon temperature.   Leaves begin to emerge when the length of daylight exceeds thirteen hours; they begin to shut down once daylight drops below 11 hours.  The yellow-green catkins emerge at the same time as the leaves, and soon give way to clusters of small green acorns which overwinter on the tree, ripening and falling late in their second summer.  The acorns are generally as wide as long with shallow cups–and are highly tannic; nevertheless, they are readily consumed by squirrels and deer.

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