Quercus albaL.

white oak

WFO wfo-0000289457 Accepted WFO 2026-06 6 photographs CC0 / CC BY In the accuracy benchmark

Plate 1 figs. a–f

Quercus alba, photographed by Jack Forrester
fig. a Jack Forrester, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205841934
Quercus alba, photographed by Mila C.
fig. b Mila C., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205846241
Quercus alba, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. c Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203493083
Quercus alba, photographed by Nathan T. Jones
fig. d Nathan T. Jones, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205525262
Quercus alba, photographed by David Ratledge
fig. e David Ratledge, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201851871
Quercus alba, photographed by Jeff Clark
fig. f Jeff Clark, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202783922

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 83 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 83 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 20 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Quercus alba f. alba
  • Quercus alba f. latiloba (Sarg.) E.J.Palmer & Steyerm.
  • Quercus alba f. pinnatifida (Michx.) Rehder
  • Quercus alba f. repanda (Michx.) Trel.
  • Quercus alba f. sublyrata Trel.
  • Quercus alba f. viridis Trel.
  • Quercus alba var. heterophylla Ettingsh. & Krasan
  • Quercus alba var. latiloba Sarg.
  • Quercus alba var. longigemma Trel.
  • Quercus alba var. microcarpa A.DC.
  • Quercus alba var. pinnatifida Michx.
  • Quercus alba var. repanda Michx.
  • Quercus alba var. ryderi Trel.
  • Quercus alba var. subcaerulea Pickens & M.C.W.Pickens
  • Quercus alba var. subflavea Pickens & M.C.W.Pickens
  • Quercus candida hort. ex Steud.
  • Quercus nigrescens Raf.
  • Quercus ramosa hort. ex Dippel
  • Quercus repanda Michx.
  • Quercus retusa Raf.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.