Quercus margaretta

This oak is named for a woman the botanist married. William Willard Ashe, the tireless North Carolina forester who described hundreds of southern trees, set the species down as Quercus margaretta in honor of Margaret Henry Wilcox, whom he would wed in 1905; few oaks carry so personal a dedication.

In plain terms, this is the sandhill cousin of the post oak, a smaller, finer-boned version of Quercus stellata that trades the bottomland clay for dry, deep, sandy upland and shrinks to suit the ground. The leaves keep the post oak's cross-shaped silhouette, that broad-shouldered Maltese-cross outline, but cut neater and smaller, and the tree holds to the white oak group, all rounded lobes and no bristles.

Often sand post oak runs as a low, colonizing thicket on the poorest sand, which is exactly the use: a tough, native, small-scale oak for ground that turns away anything thirstier. The sweet acorns feed deer, turkey, and small mammals in country that offers little else. For the longer story of the better-known relative, our journal has a piece on the post oak.

Plant sand post oak in sand and sun where a full-sized oak would be too much and nothing else feels quite native enough: a dry native or xeric garden, a sandhill restoration, or a low, informal screen or thicket on a hot, sandy bank. Give sharp drainage and full sun, allow the colonizing habit room where a drift is welcome, and pair with turkey oak, longleaf pine, and other sandhill natives. Salt- and drought-proof, and asking almost nothing once settled.