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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-041
Bur Oak
Quercus macrocarpa
Bur oak is a white oak whose acorns are among the largest and sweetest of any oak - some trees bear seed mild enough to eat raw, others need the tannins leached out before the meal goes into bread. It grows into a broad shade canopy and yields tough durable hardwood sold as white oak, and its thick corky bark lets mature trees shrug off grass fires that kill more delicate species outright. It takes thirty years or more to begin bearing and can live close to a thousand years, so it rewards patience more than any quick harvest. Acorns feed squirrels, deer and game birds, and a taproot that drives more than a metre down in the first season lets seedlings outlast drought that kills shallower-rooted trees.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 3–8
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Dry · Moderate · Well-Drained
Vertical layer
Canopy- Soil pH
- 5–8
- Plant type
- Deciduous Tree
- Mature height
- 70–80 ft
- Mature spread
- 70–80 ft
- Plant spacing
- 10–18 ft
- Root type
- Tap
- Spread pattern
- Seed
Keep exploring
Similar plants
Discover more plants with shared forest layers or growing conditions.
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Juniperus deppeana
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Almond
Prunus amygdalus
Almond flowers earlier than almost any other cultivated tree, which is its biggest weakness as much as its gift to early pollinators - a warm…
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American Basswood
Tilia americana
American Basswood is famous for the bees - mature trees hum audibly for several feet around when they bloom in early summer, giving one of…
Canopy · USDA 3–8
American Beech
Fagus grandifolia
American Beech is a slow, long-lived shade tree that can establish and eventually fruit even under an existing forest canopy, unlike almost…
Canopy · USDA 3–9
American Chestnut
Castanea dentata
American chestnut once carried the sweetest nut of any chestnut species and covered more than 200 million acres of eastern forest, but an…
Canopy · USDA 5–8
American Elm
Ulmus americana
American Elm is a native stream-bank tree that grows into a 60 to 80 foot vase-shaped shade crown and, once mature, becomes one of the…
Canopy · USDA 3–9
The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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