Quercus tomentella island oak

Quercus tomentella, Meyer-Buck House. Sairus Patel, 31 Jul 2023

Quercus tomentella, Menlo Park Library. Sairus Patel, 23 Feb 2023

The rarest of California’s tree oaks, though in cultivation for almost a century, island oak has only recently been planted at Stanford. Handsome evergreen leaves, shallowly toothed, have distinctly parallel veins reminiscent of tan oak’s. The veins are often inset into the plush-looking upper surface of the deep green, glossy leaves, resulting in a pleasing quilted effect that can be quite dramatic when the light is right. A buff fuzz covers the leaf undersides.

See a scrawny youngster about 40 feet south of 40 Peter Coutts Circle, at the edge of the greenbelt (map pin). Another is at the west corner of the vegetable garden at the Meyer-Buck Estate (map pin). These may be hybrids, possibly with Q. chrysolepis. A young tree, which looks to be much closer to the pure species, grows in the island (presumably a coincidence!) in the north corner of the Menlo Park Library parking lot (map pin). Canopy planted the oldest island oaks in the area in 2007 at the freeway sound wall along Bayshore Road in Palo Alto.