Photo: Bruce Kirchoff, CC BY 2.0, cropped · Wikimedia Commons

Delta Post Oak

Scientific name: Quercus similis

Also called bottomland post oak.

A post oak that tolerates wet feet, from the bottomlands of the lower Mississippi valley.

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Saplings ship bare-root or in a pot, usually 12 to 18 inches tall, in the dormant season, and their height and age are stated here with the price, once available.

We grow it as saplings and acorns. One email when it is listed with prices, and nothing else. Or ask, and we reply with what is ready now. Live plants ship February to May and October to November.

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RareTolerates wet soilWildlife value

Type: Large tree
Mature height: 60–80 ft
USDA zones: 7–9
Growth rate: Medium
Flowers: March to May
Fruit: Acorns, September to November
First crop: About 25 years
Mature spread: 80 ft
Sun: Full, Part
Soil moisture: Average, Wet
Grows wild in: Floodplain forests
Native range: 7 states, north to Arkansas, south to Louisiana and west to Texas
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Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas
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Delta post oak is a little-known bottomland species of Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Mississippi, growing on clay flats that flood in winter and bake in summer. It looks like post oak but grows taller and straighter, and it handles seasonal standing water that ordinary post oak cannot. A rare find for flood-prone ground in warm climates. Belongs in an oak collection, or as the shade tree on a heavy clay lot.

Size, growth and what to expect

Delta post oak is a tree of wet stream bottoms, flatwoods and river valleys from South Carolina and Georgia through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas to east Texas. It is a little-studied oak. The growth figure to plan on is our growth estimator's, roughly a foot and a half a year in youth for a medium tree, slowing as it nears full size. It grows to about 80 feet on a single straight trunk under brown, scaly bark, and in a yard expect 60 to 80 feet.

Some botanists count it a variety of post oak, which begins to bear at about 25 years with a good crop every 2 to 3 years. The delta form should follow the same rhythm. The acorns are small, half to five eighths of an inch long, and come one to three together. It flowers in spring, from March to May. The acorns ripen from September to November and drop soon after.

In the wild it keeps to fine sandy loam on the highest ridges of the first bottoms, ground that stays wet from slow drainage.

How to grow Delta Post Oak

Delta post oak is a warm-country tree, and it belongs on average to wet ground: a clay flat, a swale, a field that stands in water after winter rain. It takes full sun or part shade. It is broad in the crown at full size, so it wants 40 feet from the house and other big trees.

Plant while dormant. Saplings arrive bare-root or in deep pots. Open a wide, shallow hole, set the root flare at grade, and backfill with the soil you dug rather than a bought mix, which makes a bathtub in clay. Sow acorns as soon as they drop, an inch deep under pinned hardware cloth, because white oak acorns root before winter and will not keep in a dry shed.

Water through the first summer or two while the root goes down, though a wet site may do it for you. Sleeve the stem against rabbits and voles, cage against deer until the top is out of reach, and prune in winter only to pick a leader.

The female flowers of delta post oak open about a week after its male catkins shed pollen, and only pollen from another tree sets acorns. Plant two or more seedlings. The taproot is long and brittle, so plant a small tree and plant it once. Seasonal flooding suits it; year-round standing water does not.

Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.

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