White Oaks: What to Know + Its Impacts on Wildlife

Lou Meyer from Davey's mid-Atlantic region talks about all things white oak trees, including its acorn production, role in wildlife protection and significance to pop culture. 

In this episode we cover:  

• Knowing the difference between different oak trees (:53)
• Growing differences between white and red oaks (2:01)
• Oak decline (3:29)
• The white oak's significance to Lou (4:19)
• Oak acorn production (6:22)
• White oak fast facts (8:45)
• White oaks in different parts of the United States (10:10)
• White oaks and wildlife (11:14)
• Do clients want to plant white oaks? (14:17)
• Storm damage impacting trees (15:57)
• White oaks in pop culture (17:41)

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.

To learn more about the different types of oak trees, read our blog, Oak Tree Identification Guide.

For more information on helping your trees recover from spring storm damage, read our blog, What to Do if a Storm Damaged My Tree?

Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
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Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company 

Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com. 

Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!

Transcript

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Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here at the Talking Trees Podcast, we know trees are the answer. I'm joined again by Lou Meyer, our number one guest. He's been on more than anyone else. He's a regional business developer for the Mid-Atlantic region based in Baltimore. This is one of our occasional series on different species. Today, Lou, what are we going to talk about?

Lou Meyer: We're talking about the white oak, the mighty white oak, one of the most important trees in the eastern United States, if not the United States as a whole. Just a tremendous species.

Doug Oster: How do I know the difference between a white oak, a red oak, or any other oaks? How do I identify them?

Lou Meyer: Great question. Let's start with the white oak. It's part of the family, the Fagaceae family, which includes beeches, chestnuts, and oaks. There's about 925 different species within that Fagaceae family. The oaks are the Quercus. It's Quercus or Quercus, depending on who you ask. Q-U-E-R-C-U-S. Once you get down to that Quercus, they're split into white oaks or red oaks. The way to identify which of those two families you're talking about is in the lobes themselves. In the leaves are the telltale signs.

The white oak family has rounded lobes, which means that the points of the leaves are rounded. The red oak family has pointed points, so little spiky points. Then there's a further breakdown. Obviously, there's hundreds of different species of those types of oaks, but whites and reds are split that way.

Doug Oster: Whites and reds, what's the difference between them as far as the way they grow? Any difference?

Lou Meyer: Yes. Actually, a really interesting difference that makes a huge impact if you're into spirits, in particular whiskey. White oaks, the heartwood of white oaks, the inner wood, it contains blocked vessels. The vessels of that are blocked up. Which makes the wood impervious to liquids. The cells of the white oak contains tyloses, which are outgrowths on a type of cell called a parenchyma, P-A-R-E-N-C-H-Y-M-A, cell of the tree xylem. These cells, what they do is they dam up that vascular tissue.

Those clogged pores are what prevent oak casks from leaking. The whiskey industry, if you're an American whiskey or bourbon drinker, white oaks are wildly important. It's actually a problem in the industry that we've been harvesting them for so long, and the oak species are in decline in certain places, that it's going to present an issue for that industry. Because the white oaks have those tyloses, that's why they're used in the whiskey industry. They do grow differently.

Doug Oster: Why are oaks in decline?

Lou Meyer: A whole different host of reasons. Trees as a whole in North America, because of climactic change, are suffering. We've discussed this on past episodes where people think it's the long hot summers. Kind of, but it's more the wild weather patterns, that roller coaster that we have when you've got November days in the 70s and 60-degree February days. Then on the swing side, you've got overnight lows in April and May in the 30s, and that is really hurting the trees. Now, oaks alone, why are they more susceptible to that than others? Unfortunately, I don't have that answer. It just seems that they're a little more fragile when it comes to that.

Doug Oster: Why did you choose white oaks to talk about?

Lou Meyer: For me, a personal thing, it's the state tree of Maryland. I'm a transplant to Maryland in 2017. My family and I moved from Cincinnati, Ohio, my hometown, out to Maryland. The white oak it's actually the state tree of three states. Connecticut, where it's very specific. The charter oak, which is a specific tree, it's a white oak. The charter oak is the state tree of Connecticut. The white oak is the state tree of Illinois, and it's also the state tree of Maryland.

Interesting to note that oaks in general are the state tree of Iowa, and the national tree of the United States is an oak. Not white oak, not red oak, or a specific species, but the oak is the national tree of the United States. The white oak is the state tree of Maryland. Like I said earlier, it's a really important tree. There was a 20th-century naturalist named Donald Peattie who once said, "If oak is the king of trees, as tradition has it, then the white oak throughout its range is the king of kings." It packs a lot of punch.

Go back to colonial times, the chestnut was a widely dispersed species of tree that provided wood and food. The chestnut itself was high in protein. Animals, livestock, and humans could eat it. It had a high protein count. It was the diet for many in Appalachian family. Native Americans would feast on it as well. When the chestnut fell to the chestnut blight, the white oaks replaced it. Now, we don't eat acorns, but the acorns of the white oak are the ones that you could eat if you were to eat some. They're used to make flour. Native Americans would use white oak acorns. They would bleach the tannins out of them, dry them, and grind them into flour to use for baking. You could do that today.

Doug Oster: The chestnut was a reliable bloomer and setting those nuts because it bloomed later, but the oak is different every season as far as how many acorns it makes, right?

Lou Meyer: Yes. All nutting trees have mast. A mast is another word for the production of fruit. In oaks, it's acorns. You have mast years where species in a certain range will produce copious amounts of those nuts. We think that they do this for species elongation or species insurance. Everything in nature follows curves or trends. If you have a mast year where you put out tons of acorn, you do that after a few years of not putting out a lot of fruit. What happens is when you're not putting out a lot of fruit as an oak tree for years, the animals that feed on your acorns, the squirrels, the raccoons, the deer, their population goes down because their food source is down.

Then you throw out a mast year where you put just a tremendous amount of fruit out, and that population of scavengers is not heavy enough to eat all of your seed. You have a better chance of prolonging your genetic lineage. Yes, it's a mast year.

Doug Oster: Did you ever get hit on the head by an acorn that fell from the top of an oak tree?

Lou Meyer: I certainly have. My house, we've got two white oaks directly behind it over the house, and three red oaks on the side of the house. We've got four skylights. Last year, 2023, was a mast year. I thought we were under attack from mid-September through November. My wife would turn to me every day and go, "Are you sure this is normal?" [laughs] I'd say, "Yes, it's not a normal year, but we should expect this." "Are you sure the squirrels aren't carrying acorns up and throwing them at our house?" "Yes, that's how it goes."

Doug Oster: Well, I know what it's like to have one of those years, too, because I live in a declining oak forest, and it's the same thing. In one of those good years, we've got a couple of skylights, too. They're old '70s plastic ones, so it's just like a drum beat out there.

Lou Meyer: It's incredible. It'll wake you up, right?

Doug Oster: Yes.

Lou Meyer: Some other stuff about the white oak, we don't have the bad things to know the range of it. The white oak grows from eastern and central North America. That's where it lives. From Maine to Minnesota, including Canada, down to Texas, and over to North Florida. You square that box off in your head, that's the range of the white oak. They grow 80 to 100 feet tall with a 60 to 80 foot spread. They're a large tree. The largest in the US currently is in Virginia.

It's 90 feet tall, it's about 120 foot spread, it has a 105-inch diameter at breast height. We've talked about this on previous podcasts. When we talk about tree sizes, we refer to DBH, diameter at breast height. At four and a half feet off the ground, what's the diameter of the tree? That's an 8 and 3-quarter foot diameter. That's a darn big tree. That's down in Virginia alive right now. The largest ever recorded was actually a famous tree called the Mingo oak, so-called because it was in Mingo, West Virginia. That tree died in 1938, but it was 200 feet tall. It had a 130-foot spread, and that tree had a 10-foot diameter at breast height. A 200-foot-tall white oak is massive. Just incredible species.

Doug Oster: Does the same white oak that grows in Maryland and Pennsylvania, is that the same one that would grow in Florida, or is that a different type of white oak?

Lou Meyer: No, it's the same one that grows in Florida. The white oak, Quercus alba, is the one we're talking about. Going back to the beginning of our conversation, the white oak family has various different species within it, but the white oak, Quercus alba, is the same across the United States. There is a European white oak, also, and that tree we'll talk about a little later. The name comes, people say, "Oh, why is it called a white oak?" The bark of the tree is lighter. It's not quite white, but it is lighter than most of the other trees in the forest, most of the other oaks anyways.

Also, the finished wood, when you mill the wood, white oak is very popular for flooring. It's popular for, well, like we said earlier, cooperage, so barrel making and woodworking. It's a very light-colored wood. That's where the name comes from.

Doug Oster: I know that oaks are great for wildlife.

Lou Meyer: They're tremendous for wildlife. The white oak, I am told, is, pound for pound, the most important tree for wildlife out there. Actually, one of our favorite authors, Doug Tallamy, wrote a famous book. He's from the University of Delaware. He wrote a pretty famous book called Bringing Nature Home, which is all about how to bring nature to your property, so planting trees, shrubs, and perennials that can support your native wildlife. He said of the white oak, he pointed out that 534 species of Lepidoptera, and Lepidoptera is a caterpillar and moths and butterflies, 534 species of Lepidoptera can be found on the white oak.

Caterpillars, wasps, and then you have squirrels, snakes, birds, frogs, and other animals that shelter in the white oak. That's something that people don't talk about a lot is the importance of habitat for wildlife, not just food. Black snakes will climb up into the canopy of white oaks and other trees, but find a lot in white oaks. They'll find cavities to mate and then nest in, and then the baby black snakes come out of there. Not everyone loves that, and you might not want to bring that nature home to your backyard.

I, for one, enjoy that. We've got snakes in my backyard, and they keep the rodents down. Frogs, when you hear wood frogs calling in the spring up in the trees, I love that. White oaks are popular for that because of their furrowed bark. Very important shelter. Acorns as food, yes. Blue jays, woodpeckers, ducks, you get turkeys, squirrels, mice, chipmunks, in the more rural areas, wild boar and bear, and deer feed on acorns of the white oak. It's really important for the entire food chain, not just those pollinators with the flowers.

Insects also favor these acorns. Actually, a lot of insects will lay their eggs inside of acorns. When the acorns rot out, they'll lay their eggs in the acorn and let the larvae feed on the inside, and then they emerge from those acorns the following spring. We've talked about leaving your leaves in past episodes. Leaving acorns is also important for those pollinators.

Doug Oster: Acorns are really beautiful. We take them for granted. We're blowing them off the sidewalk. If you just take a handful of acorns and look at them, they're really pretty. They're really beautiful little nuts.

Lou Meyer: They're spectacular. Each species produces different acorns. You can identify oak tree species by their acorns. Either the cap of the acorn, the size, the smoothness, how much of the nut it covers. There's all sorts of stuff. Now, I'm not an expert on that, so I can't tell you which one is which. There are folks at Davey who are really geeking out on that kind of stuff.

Doug Oster: Now, do you get clients that actually want to plant a white oak because it is so big, or they usually just have been in place for so long? Like in my property, the white and red oaks have just been here for who knows how long.

Lou Meyer: Oh, yes. No, people like to plant white oaks. People will ask for large trees. Now, we always talk about right tree in the right place. If you have a townhome with a 12-foot by 12-foot yard and a water mainline running right down the middle, I would recommend against planting a white oak. There are plenty of other species that are appropriate for that space. If you have the room to plant large specied trees is really important. The white oak is a great one.

Again, because of the emotional connection here in Maryland, I get a lot of requests to plant white oak. The reason the white oak is the state tree of Maryland, we had a tree on the eastern shore called the Wye. The W-Y-E, Wye oak, that was a white oak. It fell apart, unfortunately, in a thunderstorm back in 2002, but it stood for hundreds and hundreds of years. It's 96 feet tall, 119-foot spread. It had about a 10-foot diameter as well. People still talk about that. There's actually a really good Baltimore-based band called Wye Oak that I love that is in reference to that oak. There's plenty of reference to the Wye oak in popular culture all over across the state. Yes, we get those requests.

Doug Oster: Let's talk a little bit about that, about having a famous tree or a tree that you love, and it does fall apart during a storm. That's something you have to deal with all the time from your point of view, from an arborist. We deal with it as homeowners, too. You do have a connection. It might not be a famous tree like that one, but you might have a connection with a tree on your own property. That's nature. I always tell people plants die. This happens. I always say something happened to it before I got it, and that's what happened, [laughs] no matter how many years.

Lou Meyer: Yes, dealing with those kinds of situations is never easy or fun. People plant trees for all sorts of reasons, a lot of memorial trees. We planted this tree when my first child was born, and now they're 40, and it's a beautiful tree, but it's, like you said, fallen apart for whatever reason. Discussing with people the succession planning of, all right, well, this tree has to go because it is now a hazard, or it's just unsightly, whatever reason. What can we replace that with, and how do we keep that going forward?

We talked about earlier, the right tree in the right place. If you have a small space that a large tree was growing in, think about a species that might be more beneficial. A lot of times, I'll recommend to people who say, "Look, I don't want another large tree. I just can't do it." Make a donation to the Arbor Day Foundation or another tree-forward foundation or group that will use your money to good cause to plant lots of trees. That's always an acceptable alternative. You want to keep that spirit alive. You want to keep the emotion alive. Trees are a good way to do that.

Doug Oster: Let's talk a little bit about this white oak and popular culture.

Lou Meyer: The white oak, because of its spread, because of its history, because of its importance, there's some great history behind it. We talked about the European white oak. When you talk about European lore and fairy tales and those kinds of things, the Druids thought that the European white oak was a sacred tree. They used, specifically, the European white oak in a bonfire. Their summer bonfires. They believed that the burning of this specific wood would protect them and bring them strength.

In Native American culture, the white oaks are symbols of peace and calmness. We plant a lot of white oaks as a nation in symbolic ways, the same way. A lot of towns will plant a peace tree, almost always a white oak, or in remembrance of wars, those kinds of things, wars ending. One of the most important, or I guess one of the biggest claims to fame for the white oak, the USS Constitution, Old Ironsides, was a famous boat. It's the longest-serving commissioned boat in the US Navy. It was built in 1797 and saw its first big action in the War of 1812. That was built 100% of white oak. Actually, I have a picture of it on the wall of my office. It's a pretty cool boat.

Doug Oster: Well, good stuff as always, Lou. I love talking about these different species with you and look forward to talking to you again, as always. Thanks for your time and great info.

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Lou Meyer: Doug, great talking to you as well. Have a wonderful day.

Doug Oster: It's always great to talk with Lou and learn about the stories of these different trees, that's for sure. Tree lovers, do me a favor, tune in every Thursday to this Talking Trees Podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I am your host, Doug Oster, and I'd love it if you would subscribe to the podcast so you'll never miss a show. If you've got an idea for a show, maybe a comment, there's a couple of different ways to reach us. You can send us an email to podcasts@davey.com. That's P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S, @, D-A-V-E-Y.com. You can also click the link at the end of our show notes to text us a fan mail message. Your ideas might be on a future show. As always, we like to remind you on the Talking Trees Podcast, trees are the answer.

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