Trees of Parkfairfax

Northern Red Oak

Oaks are the “Big Bodies” of our landscape. One of the biggest, the native Northern Red Oak, is unique among its cousins because of its rounded growth habit in both youth and maturity.  It can grow 60 to 90 feet high and wide and live to over 400 years.  The Red Oak is a very beneficial tree for us as it tolerates our pollution very well in addition to inhaling “greenhouse” carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen for our use at no charge to us. 

In spring the new leaves start out a “dusty lustrous bronze-red” which Dirr states make the tree “as handsome as the spring-flowering trees.”  The leaves develop into seven- to eleven- moderately lobed matte dark green mature leaves up to eight inches long.  In the fall the leaves turn russet-red to wine red.  The Red Oak’s trunk is dark, furrowed often laced with shiny strips. While requiring two years to develop, its acorns ripen before others, thus providing our ever-hungry squirrels with an early harvest. Commercially, the wood is used for lumber, mostly used in house and other construction.

You can find two mature examples of the Northern Red Oak easily.  The first stands near the front of Building 204, units 3104 and 3106 on Martha Custis Drive as it intersects with Valley Drive and then turns into Gunston Road.  The second is in front of Building 901 on Gunston Road just before it intersects with Martha Custis Drive at the entrance on to Shirlington Circle.

For more information about and photos of the Northern Red Oak see:

Dirr, Michael A. Dirr’s Hardy Trees and Shrubs  Timber Press 1997

www.cnr.vt.edu/DENDRO/DENDROLOGY/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=38

www.na.fs.fed.us/pubs/silvics_manual/volume_2/uercus/rubra.html

You can find other articles about and photos of the Trees of Parkfairfax at the Parkfairfax web site

www.parkfairfax.org Trees of Parkfairfax