Swamp Chestnut Oak, select line

Size, growth and what to expect

Swamp chestnut oak grows at a medium pace, roughly a foot and a half a year in its youth on an average site, which is the rate our growth estimator uses for it. On an average site it reaches 60 to 80 feet with a trunk 2 to 3 feet through, and 100 feet on the best ground. The crown spreads 40 to 60 feet, so give it room. Trees live 100 to 200 years. It can live up to 400 years, and the oldest tree dated by its rings reached 205. Only a tiny share of trees is ever dated this way, so older ones may exist.

The first acorns come at about 20 to 25 years, or within 10 to 15 on an exceptional site. The heaviest crops come around 40, with a good crop every 3 to 5 years. The acorns run 1 to 1½ inches long under a bowl-shaped cup that covers about a third of the nut. Deer, wild hogs, squirrels, turkeys, ducks and bears take them, and so do cattle, which is where the name cow oak comes from. It flowers in April and May as the leaves unfold, and the acorns ripen and fall in September and October.

It grows wild on the coastal plains from New Jersey to north Florida and west to east Texas, on the well-drained ridges of first bottoms that flood briefly in spring.

How to grow Swamp Chestnut Oak

Swamp chestnut oak wants full sun and moist ground and takes a low spot that floods in spring; ordinary yard soil suits it too. It becomes a big round-headed tree, so plant it 40 feet from buildings and other large trees and clear of power lines.

Plant a dormant sapling, bare-root or potted, between leaf fall and bud break, in a hole twice the root width and no deeper, flare at grade, native soil back in, mulch off the trunk. Stake only in wind. The acorns sprout soon after they fall and will not keep dry, so sow them on arrival, 1 to 2 inches deep, under hardware cloth against mice and squirrels.

Water deeply every week or two the first summer. Deer browse young oaks to the ground, so use a five-foot tube or wire cage and remove it when the trunk fills it, in year three, and cut off any competing leader.

Like other oaks, swamp chestnut oak is wind pollinated and needs pollen from another tree to set acorns, so plant two or more seedlings. The taproot forms early, so plant it young and leave it. Seedlings of a selected parent vary; the line improves odds, not certainty. As a white oak it withstands oak wilt better than the red oaks. The first acorns are many years off.