Scarlet oak (Quercus coccinea)
Appearance; A deciduous tree shedding its leaves for the winter, to approx 25 m in height. The crown of younger trees is conical, with rather dense branches, vaulted in older specimens, in the lower section with only a few branches, in the top – with numerous, mostly steep slopes, branches of different sizes.
The trunk is usually slender and slightly bent.
The bark is initially smooth and light gray, thanks to numerous lenticels, it is covered with a clear point and linear pattern, later gray, but always only slightly cracked, no thicker strips forming the pattern. Yellowish-brown shoots on top, on the underside they can be of a different color, Donuts oblong ovate, tightened at the top, in front of it hairy, with numerous scales.
Leaves long 8-12 cm and almost as wide are elliptical in outline, however, on each side divided into three unequally sized flaps, and these in turn have numerous pointed endings. The sinuses between the flaps extend almost to the thick median nerve. The leaf flaps protrude almost at right angles, not always exactly opposite each other. The leaves are glossy on both sides, dark green on top, paler underneath, with tufts of hairs at the corners of the nerves.
The glans has 1-2 cm wide, almost half of it is in a bowl with thick scales. In autumn, the discoloration of the tree is very characteristic – scarlet red, Occurrence; Scarlet oak grows wild in the eastern and central parts of North America. In Europe, it has long been planted in parks as an ornamental tree. Sometimes it is used to fill squares and streets.
Flowering period: May to June.
Related species: Some further oak species from the American / North America / North America-rich deciduous trees are increasingly being planted in Europe as well because of their decorative properties. These include, for example, white oak (Quercus aba), which in the shape of the leaf is very similar to the previous species, but there are no pointed plots, but only bluntly rounded. In fall, the leaves are bright purple, often even visibly flushed with purple. In America, this species is an important "supplier” wood for furniture and for building houses. Large-fruited oak is widespread in the area of the Great Lakes (Quercus macrocarpa). It draws attention with its long ones (about 20 cm) leaves, which are very irregularly shaped, they have blunt leaf sepals, and in the front half, the lamellae often remain undivided. An important species as a wood producer, and at the same time clearly insensitive to traffic exhaust gases, that is why it is more and more talked about, as a city tree.
All oaks, as true cat-flower plants, they are not ecologically dependent on insects, They are wind-pollinated, which carries pollen over great distances.