Quercus alba "Grandchildren of Wye Oak"

These are the grandchildren of a legend. The Wye Oak of Wye Mills, Maryland, was the greatest white oak in the country, a single tree that stood more than four hundred and sixty years and served as Maryland's state tree until a storm finally brought the giant down in 2002. Quercus alba 'Grandchildren of Wye Oak' are seedling-grown descendants of that famous tree, carrying the bloodline of an American icon into gardens that have room for the long view.

White oak is the grandfather of the eastern forest, a slow, massive, immensely long-lived tree with a broad, rounded crown, pale flaky ash-gray bark, and deeply lobed blue-green leaves that turn russet and wine-red in fall. The rounded-lobed leaf is so emblematic of the American hardwood forest that The Nature Conservancy took the white oak leaf for its logo. Given room, these trees build the kind of spreading, cathedral canopy that shades generations.

No native tree has given more. White oak acorns are among the sweetest of the oaks, low enough in tannin that Native peoples across the East gathered, leached, and ground them into meal, and the acorns still feed deer, turkeys, squirrels, and jays every fall. The tannin-rich inner bark was one of the great astringents of Native American and settler herbalism, and the tight-grained, watertight timber built ships, barrels, and bourbon casks. A fuller account of the traditional medicinal uses appears in the notes below.

In the garden, plant these trees for the century, not the season, on an open, sunny site with deep, well-drained, slightly acid soil and room for a slow oak that can reach eighty feet and spread as wide. White oak resents having the roots disturbed once established, so choose the spot with care and let the roots settle undisturbed; underplant only at the outer dripline. To plant a grandchild of the Wye Oak is to hand the next generation a tree with a story already attached.