Oaks

[McGerm]

Last fall I collected some acorns from the forests around my area. The acorns from trees of the white oak group sprouted in December and are about 8" tall. (They are growing under my orchid HID lights.) The ones that I think were from the red oak group have yet to do anything, they were chilled from Oct 15-Jan1st. Two questions: Should I plant the white oak ones out this year or keep them potted until next year. How much longer should I wait on the red oaks?

I went back to where I collected the acorns to get a better ID on the trees. The white oak acorns came from a tree with leaves that looked most like a chestnut oak but had had some lobed oak shape to them. Could the parent tree be a hybrid and if so with what? The red oaks had no leaves still attached so my best guess is from the acorns...pin, red, or black oak.

[David E. Ross]

I potted my oak seedlings in quart pots (pots that came with some bedding plants from a nearby nursery). When the seedlings seemed to outgrow those pots, I moved them to gallon cans. Later, I moved them up to 5 gallon cans.

At each repotting, I checked for the formation of a tap root. If I found one, I cut it. That's because native oaks in my area have difficulty in adapting to garden conditions with fertilizers and summer water. Without a tap root, those same species will thrive with garden conditions.

See my .

[Tony Miklos]

I'm not sure I understand your last sentence, but Pin Oaks often hold many of their leaves until spring. I don't know of other Oaks that do that.

As far as planting them, unless it's just for fun, I'd get permission to dig up some seedlings and plant them right away, or mark them and do it in the fall. I have thousands you can pick from and wouldn't notice if you took a couple hundred.

Tony

[McGerm]

I collected acorns in the fall for the heck of it, and planted them inside after I chilled them in the fridge for a bit. I tried to ID the acorns after I got them home. The ones with fuzzy internal acorn caps I sorted as red oaks, and the smooth ones I put in the white oak pile. I then looked at the shapes and decided to move a couple to the opposite pile. By the time they were chilled and ready to plant the white oak ones had sprouted. That confirms that I sorted them correctly. The red oak ones have yet to sprout even after 3 months in pots.

This past weekend I went back to the hills where I collected them. I remember the trees from were I took the acorns. The one in an open area where I got the white oak acorns appeared to be a Chestnut oak Q. prinus, or a close hybrid from the leaves still on some of the branches. There were many acorns sprouting around this tree. The area where I got the red oak acorns had several large trees in a bit of a grove. These trees had no leaves attached that I could see very well. I went around and looked at the ground. The dry leaves in this area looked like black oak. The acorns still on the ground were all obviously from the red oak group, but they looked like a mixture of red, black, or pin oak. I took some with me to the library later in the day, and the best I could tell was the range of acorns I collected fit the appearance of red oaks in general, and some more or less like a particular species or other.

Still my key question is should I plant the white oaks out this spring or wait? And my second question is how much longer should I wait before throwing away the red oaks?

Jim USDA Zone 6b/7a Sunset Zone 34, for whatever it matters