This is a hard tree to find. I noticed a 45 gallon tree that I didn't recognize in Beyond Paradise Nursery, labeled as "Mexican Red Oak". I used my phone to try to identify it on the internet, but could not find anything like the one I was looking at among the Mexican oak species. The salesman at the tree nursery said that several years ago, his boss had seen a beautiful tree (did not remember where) and had collected acorns and planted them. This was the last one remaining.
The leaves were unusually shaped and green, but starting to turn red. I decided to purchase it and it was planted in December 2015. Between purchasing and planting I identified it as a Southern Red Oak, a native tree to this region, but normally not to be found in tree nurseries. This became one of my favorite trees because of its beautiful deep red autumn foliage! It leafed out in 2016 on March 23rd but some of the lower branches remained bare - they were dead, perhaps due to being damaged during transport.
It looked OK during the summer of 2016, but by autumn did not have as many leaves as in 2015. The leaves also did not turn as uniformly red. We visited Big Thicket on Thanksgiving weekend in 2016 and saw that none of the Southern Red Oaks there had turned red - more of a yellowish brown. On March 25th 2017, the Southern Red Oak leafed out again but several more branches were dead. I pruned them off making the tree look a lot sparser than it originally did - a worrying trend..... On November 17th 2017, the tree was sparse and some of the remaining leaves turned red.
During the baking, rainless months of July and August 2019, this tree, along with several other trees suffered from most of its leaves turning brown, despite weekly watering. It hobbled through the rest of the summer but with only a few green leaves remaining.
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Southern Red Oak (late June 2021)
Southern Red Oak (early July 2020)
Southern Red Oak (end of June 2019)
Southern Red Oak (July 2018)
Southern Red Oak (July 2017)
Southern Red Oak (July 2016)
Southern Red Oak (December 2015)
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