Quercus serrata

What to Eat

Edible parts: Seeds, Nut, Leaves

The seed, about 15mm long, is highly nutritious but must be cooked before eating. It can be dried and ground into a powder to use as a stew thickener or mixed with cereals for bread. Bitter tannins in the seed can be leached out by washing thoroughly in running water, though many minerals are lost in the process. Either whole seeds or ground powder can be leached — whole seeds can take several days or weeks, and one traditional method was to place them wrapped in a cloth bag in a stream. Leaching powder is faster. A taste test confirms when enough tannin has been removed. The traditional preparation involved burying seeds in boggy ground over winter; the germinating seed dug up in spring would have shed most of its bitterness. Leaves can be cooked and eaten as a famine food when nothing else is available. The roasted seed serves as a coffee substitute.

Where to Find It

It is a temperate plant. In China it grows in deciduous forest between 100-2000 m altitude. It suits USDA hardiness zones 4-8. In Melbourne Botanical Gardens.

Asia, China, Himalayas, Indochina, Japan*, Korea, Laos, SE Asia, Taiwan,

How to Identify

A tree. It grows to 25 m tall. The leaves may not have a leaf stalk. The leaf blade is narrow and oval. It is 7-17 cm long by 3-9 cm wide. It is thinly leathery. The base is nearly rounded. There are teeth along the edge. It tapers to the tip. There are 7-12 secondary veins each side of the main vein. The female flowering stalk is 1.5-3 cm long. The cup encloses 1/4 of the nut. The nut is 1.7-2 cm long by 0.8-1.2 cm wide.

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. Trees are often coppiced in China. The seed ripens in its first year. 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 rapidly if allowed to dry out. It can be stored moist and cool over winter but is best sown as soon as it is ripe in an outdoor seed bed, with protection from mice and squirrels. Small quantities can be sown in deep pots in a cold frame. Because plants develop a deep taproot, they should be moved to their permanent positions as soon as possible — seed sown in situ produces the best trees. Trees left in a nursery bed for more than 2 growing seasons transplant very poorly.

Medicinal Uses

Galls produced on the tree are strongly astringent and can be used in treating haemorrhages, chronic diarrhoea, and dysentery.

Other Uses

A mulch of leaves repels slugs and grubs, though fresh leaves should not be used as they can inhibit plant growth. Oak galls caused by insect larvae are a useful source of tannin once the insect has pupated and departed; the tannin can also serve as a dyestuff. The wood is very hard, strong, and red-brown in colour, used for farm implements and similar purposes.

Quercus serrata, the jolcham oak (Chinese: 枹栎; pinyin: bāolì, Japanese: 小楢 (konara)), is an East Asian species of tree in the beech family. It is native to China, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea.

Other Information

The leaves are famine food.

Notes

There are about 600 Quercus species.

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