Double-Checking

[TexasTimbers]

I'm pawning these off over on the sawmill forum as Black Jack Oak because I'm pretty sure I'm right, but I would like a second opinion to be sure. Excuse the chain it was windy yesterday ...

[SwampDonkey]

I believe you are right on the identification. The only other oak that is close is water oak Q. nigra. Only the cap on the acorns covers less than half the acorn, and the acorn is more stout/broad then your black jack oak. I think Arkansawyer has had a lot of experience with black jack oak. You might browse through the rest of this board and see a similar thread posted.


cheers

[WDH]

It certainly looks like Blackjack Oak.  I would surely bet a dollar on it.

[TexasTimbers]

I did some scraping today. I think it must be a Black Jack, but even if it is a Black Oak it could still be a champion because I looked up Black Oak in WDH's link and mine is bigger than those too. The biggest Black Oak is 129 circ=41.069 dia.

Anyway, here is some more pictures I took to try and solve this once and for all. I am going to show y'all everything I thought might help solve it I sure can't I have looked through all my books and I just really stink at ID at least for now.

Here's the scrape. No yellow that I can see.


A better look at the lower leaves maybe . .


Here's the acorns . . . .


And the surface roots are probably not indicitave of just Black Jack because alot of oaks have big surface roots but here they are anyway . . .


And instead of using my arms a measuring stick I taped it today. It is closer to 55" I believe.

[Phorester]

Scrapes like that may not show the yellow inner bark in a black oak.  You may have scraped past it down to the wood.  (Even if you cut off a limb, it will only show up as an extremely thin yellow/orange ring around the limb just underneath the rough outer bark.)

I usually take my pocketknife and bore a hole straight into the trunk.  As the knife point tears through the outer bark going toward the wood, it will either bring up a piece of the yellow inner bark, or you can see it in the hole.  Choose a place where the bark looks to be thin.  In the bottom of a bark furrow for instance.

I think another way to say it is to just use your knife point to dig out a small piece of the bark, down to the wood.  About the size of a pencil eraser. The yellow inner bark will be on that little peice of bark, or can be seen in the knife hole in the trunk.  You may have to dig pieces out of a known black oak and another, different, oak, white oak for instance, to see how this yellow inner bark of a black oak looks.

[WDH]

I am a little confused.  What I see in the extra pictures looks like water oak, Quercus nigra.  The picture of the leaves on the pages of the book with the chain are definitely blackjack oak, Quercus marylandica.  But the other pics that show the bark and the leaves and the acorns sure looks like water oak.  Water oak and blackjack oak have very similiar leaf shapes, however, the leaf sizes are significantly different.  Water oak leaves are much smaller, about the size of your thumb or maybe two to three  fingers held together.  Blackjack oak leaves on the otherhand (pardon the pun), would be about the size of your whole hand.  That is why I feel confident that the pics on the pages of the book with the chain are blackjack oak;  They are too large to be water oak.  Also, the bark in the pic sure looks like water oak.  In GA, blackjack oak bark on the lower bole (base) of the tree will be dark black and tends to be knobby.  Water oak bark is not as rough and is greyer versus blacker.  It may be that the scale in the pics of the bark, leaves, and acorns are misleading.  Did the leaves on the picture on the pages of the book and other pictures of the bark, leaves, and acorn all come from the same tree?  That would help to know.   

[WDH]

One thing that I can say with much certainty is that it is not black oak, Quercus velutina.

[SwampDonkey]

Those leaves and acorns in that pic sure looks like water oak to me also. The bark fits what is pictured and described in the 'Dendro Bible' also.

[TexasTimbers]

I am a little confused.

I think my lack of specificity is the source of your confusion. That big leaf was picked upp off of the ground. i didn't take it off the tree. I was trying to identify the leaf and somehow it all got morphed in with this thread I guess. Sorry.

I think y'all are onto something with the water oak. A wise birdy had told me the same thing a couple days ago.

[ely]

water oak, we call em pin oak here.

[SwampDonkey]

pin oak is Q. palustris, as far south as northern Arkansas and northeast Okla, inclusions in central NC also. Leaves are deeply lobed like other red oaks.

[SwampDonkey]

Something to note: Mature scarlet oak Q. coccinea has nearly black bark also, but the upper branches often have more flaky bark, but otherwise is very similar to black oak Q. veluntina. Acorns on scarlet oak are more blunt and can have concentric rings on top side of the acorn (opposite end of the cup).

[WDH]

Kevjay,

What you have there is water oak ( in the last 3 pics). 

By the way, if you think you have located a champion tree in Texas, whatever species, I can tell you how to measure it to calculate the points to test if it is in the running.  The Texas champion water oak has a diameter of over 6 feet, so it is a big one.

[WDH]

As to Scarlet Oak, another helpful characteristic is that the bark will have silver streaks running up the stem.  Black Oak does not have the silver streaking.