White Oaks: A Long and Storied History

By Sandy K. Johnson, Extension Master Gardener   

If you are looking for generational impact in a living tree, consider Quercus alba (white oak).

“I’m a little partial to white oaks, because they’re going to live 300, 400, 500 years,” said Dr. John Seiler, Virginia Tech professor and tree physiologist. “You honestly can’t go wrong with a white oak.”

Consider:

• The largest recorded specimen of Quercus alba lived on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The Wye Oak had a circumference of nearly 32 feet and was believed to be more than 500 years old before it perished in a 2002 storm. Quercus alba is the Maryland state tree.
• In Virginia, another 500-year-old white oak tree towers over Bothwick Hall, a plantation house established in 1734 near Warfield. It is 86 feet tall with a trunk circumference of 28 feet and a crown width of 113 feet.
• To give you some perspective, those two trees were saplings in the era when Galileo made his scientific achievements, Martin Luther sparked the Reformation in Europe, and explorer Walter Raleigh named a new territory in honor of Queen Elizabeth — “Virginia.”

Quercus alba is a tried and true native plant. It tolerates clay and dry soils, abundant in northern Virginia. A keystone species, the white oak supports 80 birds and mammals and up to 534 Lepidoptera species. The Virginia Native Plant Society honored White Oak as Wildflower of the Year in 2011.

It prefers a sunny location — but make sure you measure the planned space to be certain you have enough room to accommodate a mature white oak. Though the white oak is a superb tree, one way you could go wrong with it is to plant it too close to a house or otherwise fail to provide it room to reach its potential.

Seiler said urban street trees have an average lifespan of just 7-15 years. “Urban trees have a  tough, tough life,” Seiler said. “Their life spans are nowhere near what they are in the natural environment. It’s like when you’re not taking care of yourself. They literally have a hard time taking care of themselves,” given limited amounts of soil and  water and having to tolerate the pollutants washing off the streets.

Additional resources from Virginia Tech for trees:

Virginia Urban Street Tree Selector
Developed by Susan Day; Programming by Andrew Meeks and John Peterson.
https://dendro.cnre.vt.edu/dendrology/treeselector.cfm

The street tree selector is designed to serve as a resource and forum for street trees. Trees in downtown areas are under intense pressures from pavement, buildings, and people. Many factors restrict tree choices in these sites: reduced rooting areas, extreme pHs, clearance requirements, etc. Finding a variety of trees that will perform well in these situations can be difficult. If you are planning tree plantings for a streetscape, a median, a parking lot, or main street, we hope you will be able to find some suggestions using the search functions provided here. The site is designed for Virginia communities, but will also be useful to the Mid-Atlantic region and beyond.

Virginia BIG Trees
https://bigtree.cnre.vt.edu/

The Virginia Big Tree Program began as a 4-H and FFA project in 1970. Today the program is coordinated by the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation at Virginia Tech. We are a passionate community of tree enthusiasts that includes Virginia Tech faculty and staff, Virginia Cooperative Extension staff, and numerous individual and organizational volunteers from around the state. Our mission is to increase the care and appreciation of all trees – big and small – and educate the Commonwealth about the value of trees and forests.”

vTree -Virginia Tech Tree Identification, a free app built by Professor Seiler at Virginia Tech that identifies 1,100 tree species. Programming by John Peterson.
https://dendro.cnre.vt.edu/dendrology/vtree.htm

It contains fact sheets for 969 woody plants from all over North America with an in-depth description, range map and thousands of color images of leaves, flowers, fruit, twigs, bark and form.
Users can narrow the species list for any location in North America using the phone’s GPS or any entered address or zip code. Basically the application can become “The Woody Plants of Where You Are Standing.” For example, it can become “The Woody Plants of Southwestern Oregon,” “The Woody Plants of Central Park,” or “The Woody Plants of 37.108 lat., -80.452 long., elevation 2118.”

Users can further narrow the species list by answering a series of very simple tree attribute questions such as where the plant is growing, leaf shape, leaf arrangement, flower color or fruit type. The species list can also be narrowed by typing a keyword such as oak, Abies, red or palm. For example, if “oak” is typed, only oaks found in the defined area will be listed.

A feature also allows you to send any tree related question to “Dr. Dendro,” a tree expert in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation at Virginia Tech. You can send a tree description or pictures of your plant and experts will help with identification.