Last fall I collected some acorns from the forests around my area. The
acorns from trees of the white oak group sprouted in December and are
about 8" tall. (They are growing under my orchid HID lights.) The ones
that I think were from the red oak group have yet to do anything, they
were chilled from Oct 15-Jan1st. Two questions: Should I plant the
white oak ones out this year or keep them potted until next year. How
much longer should I wait on the red oaks?

I went back to where I collected the acorns to get a better ID on the
trees. The white oak acorns came from a tree with leaves that looked
most like a chestnut oak but had had some lobed oak shape to them.
Could the parent tree be a hybrid and if so with what? The red oaks
had no leaves still attached so my best guess is from the acorns...pin,
red, or black oak.

McGerm wrote:
Last fall I collected some acorns from the forests around my area. The
acorns from trees of the white oak group sprouted in December and are
about 8" tall. (They are growing under my orchid HID lights.) The ones
that I think were from the red oak group have yet to do anything, they
were chilled from Oct 15-Jan1st. Two questions: Should I plant the
white oak ones out this year or keep them potted until next year. How
much longer should I wait on the red oaks?

I went back to where I collected the acorns to get a better ID on the
trees. The white oak acorns came from a tree with leaves that looked
most like a chestnut oak but had had some lobed oak shape to them.
Could the parent tree be a hybrid and if so with what? The red oaks
had no leaves still attached so my best guess is from the acorns...pin,
red, or black oak.


I potted my oak seedlings in quart pots (pots that came with some
bedding plants from a nearby nursery). When the seedlings seemed to
outgrow those pots, I moved them to gallon cans. Later, I moved them up
to 5 gallon cans.

At each repotting, I checked for the formation of a tap root. If I
found one, I cut it. That's because native oaks in my area have
difficulty in adapting to garden conditions with fertilizers and summer
water. Without a tap root, those same species will thrive with garden
conditions.

See my http://www.rossde.com/garden/garden_oak_acorn.html.

--
David E. Ross
Climate: California Mediterranean
Sunset Zone: 21 -- interior Santa Monica Mountains with some ocean
influence (USDA 10a, very close to Sunset Zone 19)
Gardening pages at http://www.rossde.com/garden/

McGerm wrote:
Last fall I collected some acorns from the forests around my area. The
acorns from trees of the white oak group sprouted in December and are
about 8" tall. (They are growing under my orchid HID lights.) The ones
that I think were from the red oak group have yet to do anything, they
were chilled from Oct 15-Jan1st. Two questions: Should I plant the
white oak ones out this year or keep them potted until next year. How
much longer should I wait on the red oaks?

I went back to where I collected the acorns to get a better ID on the
trees. The white oak acorns came from a tree with leaves that looked
most like a chestnut oak but had had some lobed oak shape to them.
Could the parent tree be a hybrid and if so with what? The red oaks
had no leaves still attached so my best guess is from the acorns...pin,
red, or black oak.

I'm not sure I understand your last sentence, but Pin Oaks often hold
many of their leaves until spring. I don't know of other Oaks that do that.

As far as planting them, unless it's just for fun, I'd get permission to
dig up some seedlings and plant them right away, or mark them and do it
in the fall. I have thousands you can pick from and wouldn't notice if
you took a couple hundred.

Tony

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I collected acorns in the fall for the heck of it, and planted them
inside after I chilled them in the fridge for a bit. I tried to ID the
acorns after I got them home. The ones with fuzzy internal acorn caps
I sorted as red oaks, and the smooth ones I put in the white oak pile.
I then looked at the shapes and decided to move a couple to the
opposite pile. By the time they were chilled and ready to plant the
white oak ones had sprouted. That confirms that I sorted them
correctly. The red oak ones have yet to sprout even after 3 months in
pots.

This past weekend I went back to the hills where I collected them. I
remember the trees from were I took the acorns. The one in an open
area where I got the white oak acorns appeared to be a Chestnut oak Q.
prinus, or a close hybrid from the leaves still on some of the
branches. There were many acorns sprouting around this tree. The area
where I got the red oak acorns had several large trees in a bit of a
grove. These trees had no leaves attached that I could see very well.
I went around and looked at the ground. The dry leaves in this area
looked like black oak. The acorns still on the ground were all
obviously from the red oak group, but they looked like a mixture of
red, black, or pin oak. I took some with me to the library later in
the day, and the best I could tell was the range of acorns I collected
fit the appearance of red oaks in general, and some more or less like a
particular species or other.

Still my key question is should I plant the white oaks out this spring
or wait? And my second question is how much longer should I wait before
throwing away the red oaks?

Jim
USDA Zone 6b/7a
Sunset Zone 34, for whatever it matters