PIN OAK
Quercus palustris, Michx.
Form.—Height 50-75 feet, diameter 2-3 feet; trunk usually straight and bearing a conic, well-shaped crown, lower limbs usually drooping and curving upward at the tips.
Leaves.—Alternate, simple, much smaller than those of the Red Oak, with 3-7, coarse-toothed, bristle-tipped lobes, with rounded sinuses; dark green and shining above, pale below, and smooth except for bunches of brownish tomentum in the axils of the principal veins.
Flowers.—Appear with the leaves; monoecious; staminate flowers in catkins 2-3 inches long; pistillate short-stalked and with red styles.
Fruit.—Acorns maturing in autumn of second year after the flowers; cup thin, shallow, about ½ inch across, enclosing about ¼ of the nut; kernel yellowish, bitter.
Bark.—Not as rough as that of most of the oaks, but with shallow fissures and broad flat ridges.
Wood.—Heavy, hard, strong, light-brown.
Range.—Massachusetts and Michigan to Virginia, Tennessee and Oklahoma.
Distribution in West Virginia.—Not a common tree. Plentiful near Princeton, Mercer County, and less common in Hardy and Morgan counties; doubtless growing locally in most of the counties south of the Great Kanawha River.
Habitat.—Prefers low ground along streams and borders of swamps.
Notes.—Pin Oak leaves resemble those of Scarlet Oak, but the appearance of the whole tree is quite different from it. The drooping lower branches and the location of the tree most readily distinguish it, and a comparison of its small acorns with the large acorns of the Scarlet Oak will serve to separate the two species. It is unexcelled as a tree for parks where it grows with a straight trunk and beautiful rounded crown.