Prepare yourself for a striking display of fall foliage as our Texas red oaks begin to trade their green canopies for a blaze of deep orange and red. As part 1 to our Texas Fall Foliage Series, SBCA is spotlighting one of our favorite native trees, the Texas red oak! Texas red oak’s scientific name, Quercus buckleyi, honors the American geologist and botanist Samuel Botsford (S.B.) Buckley who discovered a number of plants and mollusks in the American South during the 1850s-1870s. Texas red oak is also commonly referred to ask Texas oak, Spanish oak, and Buckley’s oak. Don’t mistake it for Southern red oak—a separate East Texas species which happens to share its common name, Spanish oak.
This small-to-medium sized tree grows 40 to 50 feet tall on average with the tallest recorded Texas red oak reaching 70 feet. Texas red oaks tend to grow multiple trunks measuring roughly 10 inches in diameter. Their greyish brown bark is smooth on the younger branches and furrowed into ridges on the lower trunk and older branches. Their elliptic leaves are alternately arranged along the branch and divided into 5 to 9 deep lobes ending in bristle-tipped teeth. Glossy and dark green on the front sides and pale green and fuzzy on the undersides throughout spring and summer, these leaves transform to hues of deep orange and red in late fall.
(All photos by LAWNS Tree Farm)
The Texas red oak’s native range extends from South Central Texas to North Central Oklahoma. Karst topography (like the limestone creek beds, slopes, and ridges we’re used to seeing throughout Central Texas) constitutes its native habitat. In fact, Texas red oaks dot the upper woodlands of the Texas Hill Country all the way west to around Sonora. This tree prefers alkaline soils, but will tolerate neutral to slightly acidic soils too.
