Oriental cork oak
Quercus variabilis · Fagaceae · 굴참나무
How to spot it
Bark with a thick cork layer and leaf undersides densely covered with grayish-white stellate hairs.
Look
- Leaves
- Long elliptic, elliptic or long elliptic-lanceolate, 8-15 cm long, with needle-like sharp teeth and 9-16 pairs of side veins. Hairless above, densely grayish-white stellate-hairy beneath; the leaf stalk is 1-3 cm long.
- Flowers
- Blooms in May along with the leaves. Male catkins hang from the base of new shoots and female ones stand upright above.
- Fruit
- The nut is round and enclosed by many long, recurved scales; it matures in early September to October of the next year.
- Bark
- Bark develops thick cork and is deeply fissured.
Where it grows
- In Korea
- Native
- Native to
- Also found in Japan, Taiwan, China, Vietnam and Tibet; in Korea it grows across the peninsula except Jeju-do (50-1,200 m elevation), and is common south of the central region, especially in Gyeongsang-do and Gangwon-do.
- Ecology
- A sun-loving tree that grows even on poor, dry, sunny sites, mixing with Quercus aliena, Q. mongolica, pine and Q. acutissima. It is common at lower elevations than Q. mongolica and higher than Q. acutissima, and hybridizes readily with Q. acutissima, so some individuals show intermediate traits.