Quercus coccinea

What to Eat

Edible parts: Seeds, Nut

The seed, up to 25mm long and 15mm wide, must be cooked before use. It can be dried, ground into a powder, and used as a stew thickener or combined with cereals for bread-making. Bitter tannins are present and can be leached out by thoroughly washing the seed in running water, though some minerals will be lost in the process. Either whole seeds or ground powder can be used. Whole seeds may take several days or even weeks to leach adequately — placing them in a cloth bag in a running stream is one established method. Ground powder leaches considerably faster. A simple taste test confirms when enough tannin has been removed. Seeds could also be buried in boggy ground over winter; the germinating seed dug up in spring would have shed most of its astringency. The roasted seed serves as a coffee substitute.

Where to Find It

It is a temperate plant. It is native to eastern North America. Trees are frost hardy. It will grow on most soils except those with lime. It cannot tolerate shade. Hobart Botanical Gardens. It suits hardiness zones 2-9. Arboretum Tasmania.

Australia, Britain, Canada, Europe, North America, Tasmania, USA,

How to Identify

A tree 20-25 m tall. It spreads 12-15 m wide. The trunk is 60-90 cm across. The bark is grey-brown. It loses its leaves during the year. The leaves are 10-15 cm long. There are 7-9 deep lobes. The leaf stalks are 4-6 cm long. The leaves are glossy and deeply divided. They are dark green but turn bright red in autumn. The acorns are 15-20 mm long. They are squat and fat. The cup encloses one half of the acorn. The scales are light reddish-brown.

How to Grow

Prefers a good deep fertile loam which can be on the stiff side. Young plants tolerate reasonable levels of side shade. Tolerates moderate exposure, surviving well but being somewhat stunted. Prefers warmer summers than are usually experienced in Britain, trees often grow poorly in this country and fail to properly ripen their wood resulting in frost damage overwinter. A very ornamental tree, it is fast-growing but short-lived in the wild. Seed production is cyclic, a year of high yields being followed by 3 - 4 years of low yields. The tree flowers on new growth produced in spring, the seed taking two summers to ripen. Intolerant of root disturbance, trees should be planted in their permanent positions whilst young. Hybridizes freely with other members of the genus. Plants in this genus are notably resistant to honey fungus.

Propagation: Seed loses viability quickly if allowed to dry out. It can be stored moist and cool over winter, but is best sown as soon as it ripens in an outdoor seed bed with protection from mice and squirrels. Small quantities can be sown in deep pots in a cold frame. Plants develop a deep taproot and should be moved to permanent positions as soon as possible — seed sown in situ produces the best trees. Trees should not be left in a nursery bed for more than two growing seasons, as they transplant very poorly after that point.

Medicinal Uses

Any galls that form on the tree are strongly astringent and have been used in the treatment of haemorrhages, chronic diarrhoea, and dysentery.

Other Uses

A leaf mulch helps repel slugs and grubs, though fresh leaves should not be used as they can inhibit plant growth. Oak galls — formed through the activity of insect larvae living within growths on the tree — are a useful tannin source once the insects have pupated and left, and the tannin can also serve as a dyestuff. The wood is strong, hard, heavy, and coarse-grained, weighing 46lb per cubic foot. It is considered inferior to white oak timber but is nonetheless used in construction and furniture-making.

Quercus coccinea, the scarlet oak, is a deciduous tree in the red oak section Lobatae of the genus Quercus, in the family Fagaceae. It is primarily distributed in the central and eastern United States. It occurs on dry, sandy, usually acidic soil. It is often an important canopy species in oak–heath forests. The scarlet oak is the official tree of Washington, D.C.

Production

It is fast growing.

Notes

There are about 600 Quercus species.

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