A large tree, sometimes 160 feet high. The bark is corky, with corky ridges along the twigs. The buds are like those of the swamp white oak, but the scales are more pointed. Often the dried stipule or a piece of it is left, as it is persistent in this species. Alternate leaf-scars. The acorn is almost entirely enclosed in a thick cup with a mossy fringed border.
The curious corky ridges along the twigs distinguish the mossy cup oak at all seasons of the year, and its aspect in winter is unusual and picturesque, owing to this peculiarity.
MOSSY CUP OAK
Quercus macrocarpa
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The branches are irregular, the buds are small, and the acorns are large and enclosed for more than half their length in a cup covered with prominent scales and bordered with a thread-like fringe. Michaux says that these threads do not appear when the tree is in the midst of a forest or when the summers are not very warm.
The wood of the mossy cup oak is even more valuable than that of the white oak. It is heavy, strong, hard, tough, close-grained, and durable in contact with the soil. It is used for the same purposes as that of the white oak.
One can easily trace the family resemblance between the mossy cup oak and the cork tree of Southern Europe, which yields the cork of commerce.
The specific name, macrocarpa, comes from two Greek words meaning large fruit, and refers to the cups and acorns. The mossy cup oak is found in the West and in certain localities in New England. It is found on the banks of the Penobscot River in Maine, on the shores of Lake Champlain in Vermont, and among the Berkshire Hills, near Stockbridge, and on the banks of the Ware River in Massachusetts.
Chestnut or Rock Chestnut Oak Quercus prinus