Quercus rubraL.

northern red oak

WFO wfo-0000293006 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Quercus rubra, photographed by Michelle Norcéide
fig. a Michelle Norcéide, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205911791
Quercus rubra, photographed by Charlie Wanzer
fig. b Charlie Wanzer, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205817848
Quercus rubra, photographed by Anne Parker
fig. c Anne Parker, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203963224
Quercus rubra, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. d Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204319201
Quercus rubra, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. e Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205848179
Quercus rubra, photographed by Quinten Wiegersma
fig. f Quinten Wiegersma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205337981
Quercus rubra, photographed by Quinten Wiegersma
fig. g Quinten Wiegersma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205337160
Quercus rubra, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. h Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204132716

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 = 146 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 146 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 28 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.

  • Erythrobalanus rubra (L.) O.Schwarz
  • Quercus acerifolia hort. ex Petz. & G.Kirchn.
  • Quercus ambigua F.Michx.
  • Quercus angulizana Raf.
  • Quercus angulizans Raf.
  • Quercus borealis F.Michx.
  • Quercus borealis f. flabellata (Croizat) Rehder
  • Quercus borealis var. flabellata Croizat
  • Quercus borealis var. maxima (Marshall) Ashe
  • Quercus borealis var. maxima Ashe
  • Quercus coccinea var. ambigua A.Gray
  • Quercus cuneata Dippel
  • Quercus maxima (Marshall) Ashe
  • Quercus rubra f. cuneata Trel.
  • Quercus rubra f. houbae Trel.
  • Quercus rubra f. juvenilis Trel.
  • Quercus rubra f. obovata Trel.
  • Quercus rubra var. ambigua (A.Gray) Fernald
  • Quercus rubra var. borealis (F.Michx.) Farw.
  • Quercus rubra var. hispanica Castigl.
  • Quercus rubra var. latepinnatifida Kuntze
  • Quercus rubra var. latifolia Aiton
  • Quercus rubra var. maxima Marshall
  • Quercus rubra var. pendula de Vos

and 4 more.

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.