Sauls Oak Acorns

The Oak for Everything Oak-Timber and Acorns-Vigorous Hybrid Cross

Rather rare in cultivation Sauls oak has great potential for a variety of uses-timber, mast and ornamental. Finding mature hybrid trees in southwestern Michigan was not likely so I created my own using acorns purchased from a collector who found many Quercus prinus in a park in Pennsylvania. There was quite a mix of both white oak, bur oak and chestnut oak in that particular area. The collector did a fantastic job and collected some of the best chestnut oak acorns I have seen. In time I began thinning the trees when they began shading each other out as I was selling the trees for the nursery. You could begin to see the hybrids in the population as the leaves are lobed. It is a common hybrid in certain locations.  Finally I then selected the  best of the white and bur oak hybrids within these chestnut oaks. I  continue this process today as the planting slowly becomes over grown and the individual trees need more room to develop their crowns and produce acorns. Today the trees remain one of my most vigorous plantings and I am preparing to plant underneath them various shade loving perennials. 

Sauls oak represents a very wide range of oaks that show excellent hybrid vigor, good acorn production and the ability to tolerate a wide range of soils from alkaline to acidic. Like chestnut oak, the wood quality is very good especially the crosses with white oak. The trees show remarkable foliage and certainly selections could be done with this cross. It also would be good to produce as a seed strain and further work could be done to make populations of them and reselect for even more vigorous trees. Once again a tree species that shows us the way but will we follow?