Basket oak, cow oak, swamp chestnut oak

Quercus houstoniana C. H. Muller

Trees , deciduous, to 20 m. Bark light brown or gray, scaly. Twigs brown or reddish brown, 2-3 mm diam., with sparse spreading hairs or glabrate. Buds reddish brown, ovoid, apex rounded or acute, glabrous or minutely puberulent. Leaves: petiole 5-20 mm. Leaf blade broadly obovate or broadly elliptic, (60-)100-280 × 50-180 mm, base rounded-acuminate or broadly cuneate, margins regularly toothed, teeth rounded, dentate, or acuminate, secondary veins 15-20 on each side, parallel, straight or somewhat curved, apex broadly rounded or acuminate; surfaces abaxially light green or yellowish, felty to touch because of conspicuous or minute, erect, 1-4-rayed hairs, adaxially glabrous or with minute simple or fascicled hairs. Acorns 1-3, subsessile or more often on axillary peduncle to 20-30 mm; cup hemispheric, broadly hemispheric or even short-cylindric, 15-25 mm deep × 25-40 mm wide, enclosing 1/2 nut or more, scales very loosely appressed, distinct to base, gray or light brown, moderately to heavily tuberculate, tips silky-tomentose; nut light brown, ovoid or cylindric, 25-35 × 20-25 mm, glabrous. Cotyledons distinct.

Flowering early-late spring. Bottomlands, rich sandy woods and swamps, on variety of soils; 0-600 m; Ala., Ark., Del., Fla., Ga., Ill., Ind., Ky., La., Md., Miss., Mo., N.J., N.C., Pa., S.C., Tenn., Tex., Va.

Quercus michauxii is easily distinguished from other chestnut-leaved oaks by the felty hairs of the abaxial leaf surface and rather large acorn cups with attenuate-acute, loose scales. This species is no longer extant in Oklahoma. Historical reports from Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York have not been confirmed; possibly populations are no longer extant. (See Quercus montana for a discussion of nomenclature and the uncertain application of the name Q . prinus ).