White Oak
If any tree would classify as the tree of Guilford County it would be the white oak tree. The white oak is the most common tree of the mature forest here, and grows in abundance all over the county.
Well, how do you know a white oak when you see it? Like all oaks, the white oak has a cluster of buds at the end of the twigs. In late April and May most of our oaks have an array of drooping clusters of flower stems called catkins. These usually come out before or just with the leaves and with their various shades of light greens and browns give the oaks a rather fallish look even in the Spring! Of course all oaks produce acorns, which differ in size and shape, as well as in the shape of the little cups that hold them.
The oaks are divided into two main groups, the ‘white” oaks and the “red” oaks. The red oaks have little bristles at the tips of their leaves, the lobes of which themselves are usually more pointed. And if you look inside the broken acorn of a red oak, the inside of the acorn shell is hairy in appearance. Red oak acorns usually take two years to mature, and so there are often two different sizes of acorns on the twigs and stems. In addition, red oak trunks are usually darker in color than the white oaks.
White oaks have leaves that are less pointy and do not have bristles on the end of the lobes. The inside of their acorn shells is smooth. Their acorns mature in one year and so all of the acorns are of similar size. The trunks of white oak trees are generally lighter in color.
Interestingly the acorns of white oak trees tend to be quite edible and have a somewhat sweet taste, whereas the acorns of the red oaks are bitter and nasty in taste. But acorns were such an important source of food for Indian inhabitants that they had a way of bleaching out the bitter taste of the red oak acorns, and so were able to benefit from their abundance as a food source.
What we call the white oak is only one of the many oaks that come under the type of oak called the white oaks.
The trunks of the white oak tree tends to be light in color, and toward the tops is often quite shaggy in appearance.
As with many trees, the overall shape of a white oak depends upon the environment in which it grows. If it grows in a field, or on a homestead, with no surrounding trees competing for sunlight, it will have a very rounded shape overall, sort of like a giant mushroom, and will not grow as tall. Its massive lower limbs will grow out horizontally fifty or sixty feet. But if it grows in the woods amongst other trees, its growth is directed upward, and its limbs themselves point more upward as well. Sometimes an already older forest oak is spared when a lot is cleared, which then causes it gradually to fill out more horizontally over time at the canopy level.
A mature old forest oak may reach heights well over 100 feet, even to 150 feet!
The white oak was probably the single most important tree for the early pioneers of GuilfordCounty. For it is quite hard once dried, decays very slowly in contact with soil, bears weight well without bending, works fairly easily into various shapes for furniture, splits easily, burns hot and long, and is flexible when green. Combined with its natural beauty how can not love this tree?
It is a great wood for making baskets. I remember an old gentleman who lived near Clemson when I was in college who would show up at craft shows on or near campus with a truck load of baskets for sale. He would sit and make these baskets while he displayed and sold them. Yes, he made these beautiful baskets out of white oak wood, which he would cut into appropriate lengths, and then while still fairly moist and green, and using his knife, would split or peel off into strips about an inch wide and sixteenth of an inch thick, which he then wove into beautiful baskets of all shapes and sizes. I wish I had bought one at the time.
For the same reasons of flexibility white oak wood was extensively used in earlier days for making barrels.
My favorite white oak tree in Guilford County is in Battleground Park, about a half mile in on the right, growing by itself. It is not particularly tall, but has a spread of about 100 feet, its huge lower limbs almost low enough to touch.
There is a massive old white oak in the front yard of my good friends Ken and Joyce Terres on Heraldry Lane off Lake Jeanette Road. It has been pruned to make way for a house, and holds the scars of many long years of storms, but it is still a great old specimen, quite possibly as old as our county itself.
According to the Treasure Trees of Guilford County, the largest specimen of White Oak in Guilford County is 135 feet tall, with a trunk diameter of 62.5 inches, and a crown spread of 90.5 feet, on the property of Sandy McNairy on North Church Street.
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