Quercus affinis Scheidw.

Quercus affinis is one of the finer Mexican evergreen oaks: vigorous in growth, columnar in habit, rugged in hardiness, and lustrous in foliage, which is a dark, luscious green and often sports copper highlights when new leaves emerge.

It was introduced to cultivation by Bob Berry, who first collected it in 1982 (Berry 8204) in El Chico, Hidalgo at 2750 m asl and planted it the following year in Hackfalls Arboretum, New Zealand. He praised the ‘good central-stemmed form’ and noted that the leaves turn yellow before falling in spring (Berry 2001). Several trees grow at Hackfalls, from this and subsequent Berry collections, and they have formed tall, finely shaped specimens, the tallest reaching some 28 m × 97 cm (Hackfalls Arboretum 2020, E. Cairns, pers. comm. 2023). It was introduced to the UK by Jim Priest (no. 79), who collected it in 1984 on Cerro Potosí, Nuevo León, at 2500 m. Trees from this collection are found at Sir Harold Hillier Gardens, Hampshire, where one had reached a modest 8.8 m in 2017, and at Kew, where they have grown faster, the larger of two reaching 16 m in 2022. A tree from a subsequent introduction, collected by Sparrow and Brewster in Veracruz in 1993 (VERA 88), has done even better, forming what Grimshaw and Bayton in 2009 described as a ‘beautfiful erect pillar of 12–13 m [× 21 cm]’ and which by 2022 had soared to 21 m × 57 cm, earning the title of UK champion for girth and height (The Tree Register 2025).

The oak sends out long, slender shoots in summer, often flushed an attractive red-bronze. Grimshaw and Bayton report that on the champion tree at Kew summer shoots can extend to 1.5 m long and soon ‘become thickly clad in leaves, giving the tree a dense, almost sombre look.’ It thrives in gardens throughout England, although sometimes unripe wood can suffer frost damage; Le Hardÿ de Beaulieu and Lamant (2010), however, went as far as to suggest USDA Zone 7 hardiness. Aside from Kew and Sir Harold Hillier Gardens, larger specimens are found at White House Farm, Kent (17 m × 32 cm, 2019), Thenford House, Northamptonshire (15 × 26 cm, 2019), and Chevithorne Barton, Devon (14 × 32 cm, 2017) (The Tree Register 2025). Shaun Haddock, who grows it at Arboretum de la Bergerette in southwestern France, decribes it as one of his favourite oaks, but he warns that a moist location should be sought for it: drought spelled finis for a Q. affinis planted in a dry site, while another planted in 1993 in a valley in the arboretum had reached 15 m × 34 cm in 2016 (Haddock 2012 and pers. comm.)

Though the name Quercus affinis is well established, this was not the name given to it by its discoverer. It was first collected by Henri-Guillaume Galeotti near Real del Monte (now Mineral del Monte) in Hidalgo, around July-August 1836 (McVaugh 1978). It appears that Galeotti sent specimens back to Belgium, and Scheidweiler, perhaps prematurely, published an illustration with a brief description in an 1837 issue of a gardening journal, giving it the name Quercus affinis, due to its similarity with Q. laurina (affinis = ‘bordering on, related to’ in Latin). He also proposed a common name in French: chêne ressemblant (look-alike oak?) (Scheidweiler 1837). Following his return from Mexico in 1840, Galeotti, in collaboration with Martin Martens, described several Mexican oaks in a prestigious scientific journal (Martens & Galeotti 1843). In it, they named this species Quercus nitens, choosing an apter, more descriptive epithet that means ‘shiny’, from Latin niteo (‘shine, glitter, bloom, thrive’). Though they recognised that this was the same taxon as Scheidweiler’s Q. affinis, they appeared to express their dim view of the earlier name by adding a damning question mark after it. Further disapproval of Scheidweiler’s name is suggested by the fact that in the same publication they applied the epithet affinis to a different species (now a synonym of Q. peduncularis). Nevertheless, Scheidweiler’s name was validly published and so stands as the correct name.