Pin Oak, Large Trees

Quercus palustris: Bareroot Pin Oak Trees in Standard Sizes

The Pin Oak tree, Quercus palustris, is a big, elegant tree with a relatively narrow canopy and thinner branches than our native oaks. The branches droop at the tips and sway in a light breeze. The autumn leaves are a rich, ruddy orange-russet colour, with a hint of hot bronze. On some years, they remain on the branches into early winter.
It can reach a height of about 25 metres.

Standard trees are the largest size that we deliver; you can also buy younger Pin Oak saplings.
Browse our other Oak tree varieties, or all of our trees.

Delivery season: Oak trees are delivered bareroot during late autumn and winter, approximately November-March inclusive.
Choosing a size: Small trees are cheaper, easier to handle and more forgiving of less than ideal aftercare, so they are best for a big planting project. If instant impact is your priority, or if you are only buying a few plants for use in a place where it is convenient to water them well in their first year, then you may as well use bigger ones. All our bareroot trees are measured by their height in centimetres above the ground (the roots aren't measured).

Features:

• Height: 30m+
• Soil: Suitable for wet sites and urban planting
• Bareroot delivery only: November-March

Growing Pin Oaks

It thrives in full sun on damp, oxygen starved soils found beside rivers and lakes with heavy clay banks. This also makes it a good inner city tree, where the soil is compacted and covered in concrete and tarmac. However, it only tolerates flooding and waterlogging in winter. During the growing season, regular flooding year after year will cause it to decline.

They are allelopathic, which means that most other plants can't grow underneath them.

Did You Know?

Also known as Spanish swamp oak, this North American tree was introduced to Britain around 1800. There are records of Pin Oaks in the USA that were a stonking 60+ metres tall; in the British climate they aren't as vigorous, and the biggest one we know of was 30.5 metres in 1984, at Rough Row in Dorking.
They have short lives for an Oak, up to about 200 years old. The timber is too knotty to have many uses apart from decorative items, but it is good firewood.

Standard trees are measured by their girth in centimetres 1 metre above ground level: their trunk's waist measurement. Unlike sapling trees and hedge plants, standards aren't measured by their height, which will vary quite a bit both between and within species.
So, a 6/8cm standard tree has a trunk with a circumference of 6-8cm and an 8/10 standard has a trunk 8-10cm around. This measurement makes no difference to the tree's final height.
On average, standard trees are 2-3.5 metres tall when they arrive, but we cannot tell you precisely how tall your trees will be before we deliver them.