Quercus uxoris McVaugh

Quercus uxoris is mostly restricted to very humid sites such as ravines, typically within cloud forest but also occurring in oak forest, conifer forest, and occasionally in tropical dry forest (González-Espinosa et al. 2011). Although it has a large range, populations are very discontinuous throughout that range (Jerome 2018).

Introduced from Jalisco by Allen Coombes in 1995, Quercus uxoris has proved to be too tender to grow outside at Chevithorne Barton, Devon, UK, but is maintained under glass there (Grimshaw & Bayton 2009; pers. obs. 2023). Neither has it survived with Shaun Haddock in southern France. A plant at Iturraran Botanical Garden, Spain, derives from a collection in Omiltemi, Guerrero, Mexico, in 2011. It grows well there but loses its leaves in winter (F. Garin, pers. comm. 2023). The leaves are distinctively long, with long-acuminate tips.

The epithet derives from uxor, the Latin for wife, and root of the English word ‘uxorious’ (= ‘excessively fond of or submissive to a wife’). The authors of the article in which Quercus uxoris was published, Cornelius H. Muller and Rogers McVaugh, stated that they named it after McVaugh’s wife, Ruth Beall McVaugh, who accompanied them on many visits to Mexico (Muller & McVaugh 1972). McVaugh named another plant after his wife in the same publication: Perymenium uxoris (McVaugh 1972). These were the first two plant names to use this epithet, though several authors subsequently named other plants in honour of their wives, using this epithet or forms of it (IPNI 2025).