Quercus canbyi Sierra red oak

One of the oaks trialed in Magic’s experimental plots – a pair at Palo Road and one at Gerona Triangle – Sierra red oak is beginning to find a place in campus landscapes. See one at the southwest corner of the Shultz Building, 10 feet tall when planted in 2025; two are in the Golf Course near 560 Fremont Road (2024).

The “Sierra” in its name recalls its native haunts in the foothills of Mexico’s Sierra Madre Oriental. In Texas’s Big Bend National Park, the Chisos Mountains – sometimes considered an isolated extension of the Sierra – harbor a closely related population, Q. graciliformis, sometimes included under Q. canbyi. Puzzlingly similar oaks hover around both populations and remain to be sorted out convincingly. Compared with our more familiar Q. kellogii and Q. rubra, the leaves of Q. canbyi are narrower, their bristle-tipped lobes shallower. Autumn coloration is late (January–February) and sporadic, with pleasing patches of gold through red.