Hi, I need some help to ID this. I've been given conflicting info., so thought I'd ask here. The leaves are about 5.5 inches in length. Thanks, R.
I wouldn't say I confirmed it, particularly since I don't know scarlet oak. From the Vancouver Trees app, the leaves of scarlet oak "split at the apex into a few irregular whisker-tipped teeth". In spring, "the emerging leaves are covered in soft hairs and appear white; they then change to yellow and finally deep green", and it mentions the vivid autumn colour. Of course, pin oak reads practically the same, having "five to seven three-pronged lobes with bristle tips". And "the leaves are most similar to those of scarlet oak, but they typically have fewer lobes, wider sinuses" and have perpendicular lobes. Autumn leaves have inferior autumn colour, more a rusty brown. Collins Tree Guide mentions "buff drifts of hair under the main [leaf] vein joints" for pin oak. The pictures of scarlet oak leaves show lobes slanted a bit more toward the tip; it gives dimensions of 11cm for pin oak, 13cm for scarlet oak (but Vancouver Trees app says 10cm for scarlet oak, no dimension given for pin oak leaves). For pin oak, it says it retains "many fine dead branches in the interior and fine live ones forming a distinct descending skirt from 5 m", but actually, it's their photo of scarlet oak that shows that. Vancouver Trees also mentions the drooping downward lower branches of pin oak. Acorns of pin oak have "a shallower, smoother cupule" and from one of the Collins photos, taller thinner nuts (but another example that looks pretty similar to those of scarlet oak). Scarlet oak buds have hairy tips; pin oak buds are hairless.
