Oak, Black

Here we have the Black Oak, or Quercus velutina, nearly as common as the White Oak and Northern Red Oak in the Midwest. This medium-sized tree usually reaches heights of 60 feet and can live for about 200 years. The leaves vary in shape, typically having 5 to 7 shallow lobes with bristles at the points. They are thick, dark green, shiny above, and often hairy underneath. Unlike most trees, the Black Oak can retain its leaves into the winter months. Its acorns are approximately 3/4 of an inch long, striped, and halfway enclosed by a shaggy-scaled cap. Ripening in the fall, the acorn meat is yellow and bitter. The mature bark is black with blocky, vertical ridges on the lower trunk, and just like the color of the acorn meat, the inner bark is also sulfur yellow. Early weavers used to extract the yellow inner bark from the Black Oak and utilized it as a dye.