Fagaceae (fag-AY-see-ee)
Iconic Features
- Shrubs or trees
- Leaves simple and alternate
- Male flowers in catkins
- Fruit an acorn or spiny-burred nut
Description (Jepson)
- Deciduous or evergreen shrubs and trees
- Eudicotyledons (eudicots) – a major lineage of flowering plants including most plants traditionally described as dicots and generally characterized by
- 2 seed leaves (dicotyledon)
- Netted (reticulate) leaf venation
- Flower parts in fours and fives
- Pollen grains with 3 pores (tricolpate)
- Vascular bundles in stem arranged in a ring
- Taproot system
- Leaves
- Simple (not divided into leaflets); entire (with smooth margins) or lobed
- Alternate (1 leaf at each junction with stem)
- Flowers
- Separate male and female flowers on same plant (monoecious)
- Male flowers
- Arranged on softly-colored catkins (long hanging clusters of small, petalless, unisexual flowers)
- Each catkin has 25 to 100 individual flowers, and each tree bears thousands of catkins in any given year (Pavlik 2014)
Cup Scales of Red Oak (L) and White Oak (R) Lineages © DSchiel - Female flowers
- Inconspicuous, growing at leaf junctions of new branches or below catkins
- Ovary inferior (below the attachment of other flower parts)
- Fruit is a nut, partly enclosed by a scaly or warty cup (acorn); or 1-3 nuts, enclosed by spiny burs
Adaptations
- Oaks are masting species (Koenig and Knops 2005; Golden Gate 2012)
- Most years, oaks produce few or no acorns, instead conserving energy for growth
- About every 5 years, oaks put tremendous energy into producing an abundant crop, called a masting
- Increased acorn production in mast years ensures that more acorns escape predation, as the predator population cannot consume the amount of available food
- Masting produces a “trophic cascade,” affecting the number of organisms in the entire local food chain, with ripple effects that last years
- For example, populations of mammals who feast on acorns increase, thereby hosting more ticks, resulting in a potential increase of Lyme disease
- Oaks of different species synchronize masting cycles
- Scientists have not yet determined what triggers a mast year or how species synchronize masting across large areas, but temperature fluctuations may be a cue and thus may be affected by climate change
- The term mast comes from an Old English word for woodland nuts that gathered on the ground and were used to feed livestock, such as pigs
Notes
- Approximately 900 species, generally in the northern hemisphere
- Includes oaks, chinquapins, beeches, and chestnuts
- “Oak woodlands are one of the richest broad habitats in the state with well over 300 terrestrial vertebrates utilizing woodlands at some time during the year” (Standiford 2019)
- Oaks (Quercus) and beeches (Fagus) are wind pollinated
- About 12% of flowering plants and most conifers are wind-pollinated (US Forest Service)
- These plants do not waste energy on flower features that attract animal pollinators; instead, their flowers generally have these characteristics
- Small, petalless, and unscented, with muted colors
- No nectar
- Stamen (male flower part) and stigma (pollen receiving structure of female flower part) are exposed to air currents
- Male flowers produce a great deal of pollen, which is very small, dry, and easily airborne, as all allergy sufferers know!
- Chestnuts (Castenea species) and chinquapins (Castanopsis species), unlike oaks are pollinated by insects (Singh 2019)
- Flowers produce strong odors to attract pollinators
- Scientific name from the included genus Fagus, from the Latin for “beech”
- Represented by 5 native and 1 non-native oak species at Edgewood, as well as many hybrids
- Coast live oak (Q. agrifolia var. agrifolia) is in the red oak lineage (Section Lobatae), commonly called the red oak group
- All other native oaks at Edgewood – leather (Q. durata var. durata), valley (Q. lobata), scrub (Q. berberidifolia), and blue (Q. douglasii) – are in the white oak evolutionary lineage (Section Quercus), commonly called the white oak group
- A single non-native cork oak (Q. suber; Section Serris) grows at the Day Camp
- Oaks in the same lineage may hybridize; in fact, in the Bay area they often do
- Four of Edgewood’s five native oak species can be found near the junction of the Serpentine and Sylvan trails
- Valley (Q. lobata), blue (Q. douglasii), and coast live oaks (Q. agrifolia var. agrifolia) grow close together trailside on the upper Sylvan trail
- Look for the young blue oak that grows downhill and to the left of an unusual blue-leather hybrid
- Leather oaks grow trailside on the Serpentine trail near the junction with the Sylvan
Specific References
Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. 2012, Dec. 29. Critical Mast: The Boom and Bust of Acorns.
Koenig, W.D. and Knops, J.M.H. 2005. The mystery of masting in trees: some trees reproduce synchronously over large areas, with widespread ecological effects, but how and why? American Scientist, 93(4), 340-347.
Nixon, Kevin C. 2002. The oak (Quercus) biodiversity of California and adjacent regions. In: Standiford, Richard B., et al, tech. editor. Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium on Oak Woodlands: Oaks in California”s Challenging Landscape. Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-184, Albany, CA: Pacific Southwest Research Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture: 3-20.
Singh, G. 2019. Plant Systematics: An Integrated Approach, Fourth Edition. CRC Press.
Standiford, R.B. 2019. University of California Oak Woodland Management.
