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Allen Coombes & Roderick Cameron (2021)
Recommended citation
Coombes, A. & Cameron, R. (2021), 'Quercus acrodonta' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
Tree to 15 m tall or a large shrub. Bark grey, fissured on mature plants. Young shoots densely covered in a yellow-grey tomentum, becoming glabrous with age. Leaves evergreen, leathery, glossy dark green above with up to 11 veins on each side, to 6 × 2.5 cm, elliptic to obovate, rounded or slightly cordate at the base, the pointed apex ending in a sharp tooth, with up to 8 sharp-pointed teeth on each side varying from over most of the margin to only close to the apex. Glabrous above when mature, densely covered beneath with a yellow-grey tomentum that obscures the lateral veins. Petiole densely tomentose, to 5 mm long. Infructescence nearly sessile with up to two cupules. Cup hemispherical, to 8 × 15 mm, scales tomentose with a red apex. Acorns ellipsoid-oblong, to 2 × 1.2 cm, tomentose at the apex and about half enclosed in the cup, ripening the first year. (Menitsky 2005; Huang et al. 1999; le Hardÿ de Beaulieu & Lamant 2010).
Distribution China Gansu, Guizhou, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Yunnan
Habitat Valleys and mountains at 300–2300 m, usually on limestone soils.
USDA Hardiness Zone 7
Conservation status Least concern (LC)
Introduced as seed from Yunnan in 2013. There seems to be a single plant of this species in cultivation, at Chevithorne Barton, England, where it was 2.1 m tall in 2020 (J. MacEwen pers. comm.). Plants deriving from a 1994 collection, gathered at 2600 m in Yunnan by the Alpine Garden Society Expedition to China (ACE 1978) have been referred to this species but appear to be Q. dolicholepis.
Named by Karl Otto von Seemen in 1897; the epithet means “toothed at the tip”, from ακροϛ (acros) = extreme + ὀδούς (odous) = tooth.