Black Oak Quercus velutina Lam.

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Fagaceae -- Beech family

Ivan L. Sander

Black oak (Quercus velutina) is a common, medium-sized to large oak of the eastern and midwestern United States. It is sometimes called yellow oak, quercitron, yellowbark oak, or smoothbark oak. It grows best on moist, rich, well-drained soils, but it is often found on poor, dry sandy or heavy glacial clay hillsides where it seldom lives more than 200 years. Good crops of acorns provide wildlife with food. The wood, commercially valuable for furniture and flooring, is sold as red oak. Black oak is seldom used for landscaping.

Habitat

Native Range

Black oak is widely distributed from southwestern Maine west in New York to extreme southern Ontario, southeastern Minnesota, and Iowa; south in eastern Nebraska, eastern Kansas, central Oklahoma, and eastern Texas; and east to northwestern Florida and Georgia (18,19).

Contact Information

USDA Forest Service
Northeastern Area
Office of the Director
11 Campus Blvd., Ste 200
Newtown Square, PA 19073

Phone: (610) 557-4103
TDD: (610) 557-4160