Willow Oak (Quercus phellos)
Willow Oak is one of the most familiar large trees in North Carolina. Abundantly planted; fairly common in the wild in bottomland forests in the Coastal Plain and Piedmont.
Durham Co., NC 5/3/08.
Similar to Water Oak (Q. nigra), which has clubbed leaves, and the semi-evergreen Laurel Oak (Q. laurifolia) and Sand Laurel Oak (Q. hemisphaerica) of the Coastal Plain.
Falls Lake, Granville Co., NC 4/27/08.
Flowers appear in mid-spring. The male flowers are in long catkins.
Granville Co., NC 4/26/09.
The leaves are narrowly lanceolate like those of Black Willow, but are bristle-tipped and lack teeth.
Falls Lake, Granville Co., NC 4/27/08.
The bark is smooth on young trees and smaller branches, becoming shallowly ridged on larger trees. Bark of a medium-sized tree in Chapel Hill, NC.
Bark of a mature tree, Greenville, NC.
Hybrids of different species in the red oak group are not too unusual. This is an apparent hybrid Q. falcata x Q. phellos at Mason Farm in Chapel Hill, NC.
Here's an apparent hybrid Q. nigra x Q. phellos in Duke Forest, Durham Co., NC.
This possible hybrid between Q. phellos and Q. velutina strongly resembles Shingle Oak (Q. imbricaria), but lacks that species's uniformly soft-pubesence on the underside. This tree is in Raleigh, NC, 2 counties from the nearest known range of Shingle Oak in Virginia. There is some pubescence on the underside of the leaves, but it easily rubs off, just like that on Black Oak (Q. velutina) leaves.
Photo by Joseph Covington.
Some of the leaves of this tree have irregular lobes.
Raleigh, NC 6/11/06.
Acorn from the same tree. Photo by Joseph Covington.
More information:
NCSU Fact Sheet
Trees of Alabama and the Southeast
Silvics Manual
Virginia Tech Dendrology
Last update: Thu, 21 May 2009 02:3 cwcook@duke.edu
All photographs and text ©2009 by Will Cook unless otherwise indicated.
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