7 Meriam Street: Quercus alba, White oak

Quercus alba

This is a tree that launched a thousand ships and timbered thousands of 18th-century post and beam homes with its weatherproof, close-grained hardwood. Massive in size and ancient in age, this slow-growing oak can live for five hundred to six hundred years.

White oak is a long-lived native forest tree suitable for large open areas. It can reach 100 feet in height with wide-spreading stout branches and a rounded crown. The bark is light gray with shallow furrows forming scaly ridges or plates. The leaves are obovate to elliptical in shape with 5-9 lobes that are rounded at the apex of the grayish-green leaves. Catkins appear just before or with the appearance of new leaves. The round-lobed leaves turn burgundy in fall. Dried leaves remain into winter. Acorns are produced on mature trees. Acorns are a favorite food source for blue jays, crows, woodpeckers, squirrels, chipmunks, mice, and deer. Native Americans used white oak as medication. American colonists used the hardwood for building houses and ships, for furniture making, flooring, and for barrel staves.