Our Overcup Oak (45 gallons), from Bill Bownds Nursery, was planted in January of 2014.
It has adapted very well to the clay soil and seems perfectly at home. It does suffer from june-bug defoliation when the voracious swarms appear in spring so needs to be treated with imidacloprid. In 2015, the tree was afflicted with the same big fat green imperial moth caterpillars as the Burr Oak (see the Burr Oak page for pictures of the caterpillar). Also, later in the summer of 2015, the tree developed several yellow leaves (presumably due to the brutal heat) - see picture below. It soon lost these leaves and resumed a reasonably healthy appearance. It was showing signs of doing the same thing again in July 2016 - however, I managed to arrest it that time by deep watering every weekend.
The leaves are deeply lobed, a bit like a typical red oak, however the lobes lack bristle-tips and the bark is somewhat flaky, confirming that this is not a red oak. This tree has so far never produced any acorns. On April 1st 2017, the tree was well on its way to leafing out, but was already being attacked by "forest tent caterpillars" - hadn't seen these before in my yard. I sprayed with imidacloprid. On June 24th 2017, I found several juvenal's duskywing caterpillars chewing through the new growth.
On August 19th 2017, the Overcup Oak was still thriving - no sign of yellow leaves, unlike the last two summers.
The Overcup Oak made it through 2018 and 2019, but lost a lot of leaves, along with many of its companions, during the brutal August of 2019. |
Overcup Oak (late June 2021)
Overcup Oak (early July 2020)
Overcup Oak (end of June 2019)
Overcup Oak (July 2018)
Overcup Oak (July 2017)
Overcup Oak (July 2016)
Overcup Oak (summer 2014)
|