POST OAK
Quercus stellata Wang.
Growth Form: Small to medium tree up to 60 feet tall; trunk diameter up to 3 feet; crown rounded or obovoid, with rather stout branches; trunk gnarled or straight, usually not buttressed.
Bark: Gray or light brown, divided into flat, sometimes squarish, plates.
Twigs: Stout, brownish, covered when young by a tawny-colored fuzziness; pith star-shaped in cross-section; leaf scars alternate but densely clustered toward the tip, half-round, usually slightly elevated, with several bundle traces.
Buds: Spherical but often short-pointed, reddish-brown, up to ⅛ inch long.
Leaves: Alternate, simple; blades thick, 5-lobed, the upper three lobes squarish, separated from the lowest pair of lobes by a deep sinus, up to 6 inches long, up to 4½ inches wide, dark green and hairy on the upper surface, paler and hairy on the lower surface; leafstalks up to 1 inch long, stout, hairy.
Flowers: Staminate and pistillate borne separately, but on the same tree, appearing when the leaves begin to unfold, minute, without petals, the staminate in slender, yellow, drooping catkins, the pistillate few in a cluster.
Fruit: Acorns solitary or 2 together, with or without a short stalk, the nut oval to oblong, up to 1 inch long, pale brown, less than half enclosed by the cup, the cup reddish-brown, hairy.
Wood: Hard, heavy, close-grained, brown.