unidentified oakQuercus sp.
Fagaceae
I need help (heh, probably in more ways than one) for this ID. Unfortunately, since this is a city park in Santa Cruz and it's beyond the range of my usual double-check option of our local CNPS Montery Chapter plant lists, I resorted to Calflora's What Grows Here. There are three species recorded for this area: coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia), Santa Cruz island oak/Shreve oak (Quercus parvula), and interior live oak (Quercus wislizeni). We have a coast live oak tree at the end of our driveway, and I feel I'm now very familiar with this tree; it has new fresh green spring growth but nothing like the pretty pink flower-like sprouts as shown above. If anyone can help ID this oak tree for me, I'd be very appreciative.
6 comments:
Probably coast live oak. On many trees, the young leaves pop out of bud with a bright color for a day or so until they get enough sunlight for the green chlorophyll to mask the other pigments. Sorta reverse of what happens with fall leaves. Coast live oaks are usually (but not always) cupped and many of the leaves (but not every one) will have a small tuft of tan hair on the underside of the leaf between the main vein and side vein (=underarm hair). Shreve oak is about the same color on both sides of the leaf and in the olive green shades with no fine hairs or fuzz felt covering the underside of the leaf. This is disagreement on whether we have any tree-size interior live oaks in central California. So, go back and look for underarm hair under the mature leaves and make sure you tell everyone what you are doing.
I was hoping you'd see this, Cindy. These short trees just looked totally different than the coast live oak at home. You know, I've looked many times for the underarm hair (from one of your previous comments on oaks), and I haven't seen any. I'll keep looking. I'm going to take another look at Shreve oaks. Trees often totally stump me.
The real trick is telling a Shreve Oak from an Interior Live Oak. Some say a Shreve Oak is just an Interior Live Oak that's growing near the coast ...
Mr. Hauser, is that you? I really do need to get some books and study up on our local oaks. I'm frustrated not knowing how best to recognize them.
No, just a fellow sufferer when it comes to trying to untangle California's incestuously hybridized oaks.
Cindy, I've finally figured out the underarm hair. It's not very obvious. I'm getting old enough to need reading glasses, so little things like that are hard for me to see clearly when I have my contacts on. Previously, I thought the fuzz was some kind of hairy scale insect. Sigh...
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