Black Oak

Description

Deciduous tree to 20-30m, rarely to 45m. Bark black-brown, deeply fissured, fissures orange at center. Young branchlets brown-tomentose becoming glabrous, red-brown. Leaves 6-25 — 4.5-15.5cm, narrowly ovate to obovate, often misshapen, apex acute, base truncate, margin deeply 5 or 7 lobed, lobes ovate to triangular, 1-3 bristle-tipped teeth, dark , glabrous and glossy above, paler, densely tomentose at first beneath, becoming scurfy with a few hairs in nerve axils; petiole 2.5-7cm. Acorns ripe in second year, solitary or paired, 1.5-2.5cm, ovoid to subglobose, pale brown; cupules made up of loosely overlaping hairy scales, enclosing half of acorn.