Biorepository Data Portal

Trees , deciduous, to 20 m. Bark light brown or gray, scaly. Twigs brown or reddish brown, 2-3 mm diam., with sparse spreading hairs or glabrate. Buds reddish brown, ovoid, apex rounded or acute, glabrous or minutely puberulent. Leaves: petiole 5-20 mm. Leaf blade broadly obovate or broadly elliptic, (60-)100-280 × 50-180 mm, base rounded-acuminate or broadly cuneate, margins regularly toothed, teeth rounded, dentate, or acuminate, secondary veins 15-20 on each side, parallel, straight or somewhat curved, apex broadly rounded or acuminate; surfaces abaxially light green or yellowish, felty to touch because of conspicuous or minute, erect, 1-4-rayed hairs, adaxially glabrous or with minute simple or fascicled hairs. Acorns 1-3, subsessile or more often on axillary peduncle to 20-30 mm; cup hemispheric, broadly hemispheric or even short-cylindric, 15-25 mm deep × 25-40 mm wide, enclosing 1/2 nut or more, scales very loosely appressed, distinct to base, gray or light brown, moderately to heavily tuberculate, tips silky-tomentose; nut light brown, ovoid or cylindric, 25-35 × 20-25 mm, glabrous. Cotyledons distinct. Flowering early-late spring. Bottomlands, rich sandy woods and swamps, on variety of soils; 0-600 m; Ala., Ark., Del., Fla., Ga., Ill., Ind., Ky., La., Md., Miss., Mo., N.J., N.C., Pa., S.C., Tenn., Tex., Va. Quercus michauxii is easily distinguished from other chestnut-leaved oaks by the felty hairs of the abaxial leaf surface and rather large acorn cups with attenuate-acute, loose scales. This species is no longer extant in Oklahoma. Historical reports from Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York have not been confirmed; possibly populations are no longer extant. (See Quercus montana for a discussion of nomenclature and the uncertain application of the name Q . prinus ).

Tree to 30 m, with light gray bark like no. 1 [Quercus alba L.]; petioles to 3 cm, persistently pubescent beneath, glabrescent above; blades obovate, 7-11 cm wide, with 10-15 pairs of ovate or triangular, rather uniform, acute to rounded, usually ascending teeth, pubescent beneath with erect, few-branched hairs; acorns 2.5-3.5 cm, the cup covering half the ovoid or conic-ovoid nut, 2-3 cm wide, its large scales free and when dry often spreading. Low or wet soil, especially alluvial flood-plains; coastal plain from N.J. to Fla. and Tex., n. in the interior to Mo. and s. Ind., and at scattered stations in Ky. and Tenn. (Q. prinus, misapplied)

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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