Quercus shumardii Buckley

Quercus shumardii is one of the giants among North American oaks, reaching over 40 m in height with buttressed trunks over 1.5 m in diameter. Trees of these dimensions were probably more common when Sargent wrote about them in 1918 as ‘one of the largest of the American oaks’, and more so in earlier centuries, before most of them, like the massive Q. rubra, were ‘cut for barrel-staves or clap-boards’ (Ridgway 1882; Elwes & Henry 1910). It is similar to Q. rubra, from which it can be distinguished by the axillary tufts of hair on the leaf undersides (absent in Q. rubra, which has glabrous undersides), and to Q. palustris, which has smaller, proportionally narrower leaves and smaller acorns. It is known for its beautiful red colour in autumn, and is one of the first North American oaks to change colour each year (Sternberg 2004). Dirr (2009), however, is niggardly in his assessment of Shumard Oak’s autumn colouration: though he concedes it ‘may turn a good russet-red to red in fall’, he remarks that most of his observations ‘reflect yellow-bronze to slight reddish fall coloration’, and that among the many trees on the campus of Georgia University, ‘none develop outstanding reds’.

Shumard Oak is a dominant tree of the lower Mississippi River valley and can be found over a considerable natural range from Pennsylvania, Indiana and Missouri southward through eastern Texas. It is distributed all across regions southeast of the Blue Ridge, and in the coastal plain and Piedmont from north Georgia to central North Carolina, but is scarce or lacking in most of Virginia, West Virginia, and eastern Kentucky, as well as the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. It prospers in a climate characterised by hot summers and mild, short winters, and occurs in moist lowlands such as alluvial bottomland and mesic slopes, as well as rocky, dry calcareous uplands (Miller & Lamb 1985; Lance 2004). It is found as far north as southern Ontario, where it is listed as a species of Special Concern (Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada 2025). According to Sternberg (2004), it is a giant bottomland tree in the east and a smaller upland tree in the west.

According to The Hillier Manual (Edwards & Marshall 2019), it requires lime-free soil, but Sternberg (2004) claims that certain geographic races of the species, particularly those from Oklahoma, are quite tolerant of alkaline soils, which is unusual in oaks from eastern USA. It tolerates short-term flooding, though not shade. It is easy to transplant, and in suitable conditions it grows rapidly and becomes large.

The date of introduction seems to have been around the turn of the 20th century. Le Hardÿ de Beaulieu & Lamant (2010) and Krüssman (1978) give 1897 for the introduction to Europe of Quercus shumardii, but Krüssman indicates 1907 for var. schneckii. Jean-Louis Hélardot (2025) proposes 1908 for the species. The earliest documented introduction we have found is a tree grown from seed sent by Thomas Meehan in 1901, under the name Q. texana (sensu Sargent 1895, see Taxonomic Note), raised as Q. schneckii (as reported by Elwes and Henry in 1910) and subsequently recorded as Q. shumardii by Bean in 1951. Henry remarked that as the species inhabited a region that is very hot in summer, it was not likely to succeed in England. It seems, however, to have tolerated the English climate quite well, reaching 17.4 m × 50 cm in 1965 (Bean 1976), 21 m × 56 cm in 1973 (Clarke 1988), and 22 m × 75 cm in 2022 (The Tree Register 2025). Bean also mentioned the arrival in 1908 at Kew of small trees of ‘Quercus Shumardii Schneckii’ sent from the Arnold Arboretum. This is likely the source of the 1907 or 1908 date quoted by several references for the species (e.g. Dirr 2009), but Bean (1951) pointed out that they were the same as what was received in 1901 as Q. texana. The trees from the Arnold ‘succeeded well, turning a beautiful golden brown or rich red in autumn’, but had died by 1951.

Aside from the tree planted in 1901, several others grow at Kew, the oldest planted in 1923, and the largest reaching 25 m × 104 cm in 2022, accessioned in 1969, from seed received from the US Department of Agriculture, collected by the Cache River, Illinois. A tree at Tortworth Court in Gloucestershire was taller at 26 m in 1976, but has since died (The Tree Register 2025). Taller trees are found in Europe: in France, a tree in the Bager forest in Oloron-Sainte-Marie, southwestern France, was 33.6 m tall with a relatively slender trunk 65 cm in diameter, while in Germany, a tree at the Friedhof Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg, listed as Quercus shumardii, though the identity seems to be in question, had a dbh of 145 cm in 2021, with an estimated height of 21 m (Monumental Trees 2025).

Trees in natural habitat are considerably larger: according to the National Champion Tree Program (2025), two trees in Powell Co., Kentucky, are 41 m tall, with massive trunks 248 cm in diameter. A taller former champion, in Overton Park, Tennessee, measured 44.1 m × 180 cm (Sternberg 2004; Stein, Binion & Acciavatti 2001).

Quercus shumardii was first described by Samuel B. Buckley in 1861. He named the species in honour of Dr. Benjamin Franklin Shumard (1820–1869), a physician and geologist. Shumard served as a doctor in Kentucky, but in 1846 gave up medicine to devote his time to geology. He worked on geological surveys in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota before being appointed in 1858 as the State Geologist of Texas. Buckley served as Shumard’s assistant during the Texas Geological Survey, and though he named the oak in his boss’s honour, he would later turn against him: in 1874 he accused Shumard of mismanagement and claimed that ‘he had not the advantages of a classical education, was a poor mineralogist, and had little knowledge of the other departments of natural history’. Shumard seemed to have an equally low opinion of Buckley, writing that he was ‘utterly incompetent’ and that ‘anything he may write would not command the respect of any scientific man’ (Roessler 1875). Shumard may have been a poor mineralogist, but he seems to have been one of the first surveyors to note the occurrence in Texas of ‘Petroleum, which has been observed at several points in the State’, some three decades before the start of the Texas oil boom (Shumard 1859). In any case, no trace of the acrimony between these gentlemen remains in the nomenclature of this oak.