From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
| Bur oak | ||||||||||||||
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| Quercus macrocarpa Michaux |
Its range is generally from the Appalachian range west to the middle of the Great Plains, extending to a point in Texas, across southernmost Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, east to the Atlantic Coast in southern New Brunswick, and down the coast to Delaware.
The bur oak is a tree that prefers to grow in the open, away from forest canopy. For this reason, it is an important tree on the eastern prairies and is often found near waterways in more forested areas, where there is a break in the canopy. It is also a fire-resistant tree.
Its wood is high quality, and is almost always marketed as "white oak".
The leaves are entire and variously lobed, being highly variable in shape. Most often, the top forty percent of the leaf has shallow lobes or large teeth and is wider, while the bottom sixty percent is narrower and deeply lobed. The bark is a medium gray and somewhat rugged.
The acorns are the largest of any native North American oak and are an important wildlife food, although only borne heavily every few years. They are distinctive in having large caps that wrap much of the way around the nut, with large overlapping scales and often a fringe at the edge of the cap.
The bur oak makes an outstanding shade tree. It is one of the most tolerant of urban conditions of the white oaks, and has even been planted as a street tree in many places.
Sometimes when this tree is used in a place name, it is spelled "burr oak", as in Burr Oak State Park in Ohio.
It is sometimes confused with the overcup oak and the white oak.
