Quercus acutissima Seeds | Sawtooth Oak
LATIN NAME: Quercus acutissima
COMMON NAME: Sawtooth Oak
Plant Profile
The sawtooth oak takes its name from leaves that are edged with long bristle-tipped teeth, a shape more like a chestnut than like the rounded lobes of a European oak. It is a deciduous tree of twenty to thirty metres with a straight trunk and a crown that opens as it ages.
It grows from the Himalaya through China, Korea and Japan, and it is one of the commonest oaks of the hills behind Shanghai and Nanjing. The acorns are large, and they take two seasons to ripen, so a tree carries green first-year acorns alongside ripe ones in the same autumn.
Science & Biotechnology
The two-year acorn places the species in the Cerris group of the genus, whose acorns mature in the second season and whose leaf teeth end in a bristle. That single character separates it from the white oaks at a glance, and it also explains why a heavy crop alternates with a light one over a two-year cycle rather than within a single year.
The tree is a vigorous pioneer of disturbed ground and it coppices strongly, which is why it was managed for centuries as a stool crop rather than as a timber tree. It also responds to inoculation with truffle fungi, and experimental plantations in China have produced Tuber melanosporum on its roots where the soil is calcareous.
Uses & Benefits
The wood is hard, heavy and prone to splitting, so it goes into railway sleepers, fence posts, tool handles and charcoal rather than into furniture. In Japan and Korea it is the preferred log for shiitake, and growers select it for its thick bark and its slow decay.
The leaves were the traditional food of the Chinese tussah silkworm, and oak woodland in Shandong and Liaoning is managed for silk as much as for timber. The acorns are leached for starch, and the cupules are collected for tanning and for dye. In the United States the tree was planted for wildlife and has spread beyond the plantations. The bark is also stripped for tanning in Korea, and the wood is stacked for the winter fuel trade in the hill villages.
Growing from Seed
Collect acorns in autumn as they fall and sow at once, since they lose viability when dried. Sow two to three centimetres deep in a deep pot and leave it outdoors, since the radicle emerges in autumn and the shoot follows in spring.
Plant out at one or two years into full sun, and protect the young trunk from rabbits and from strimmers for three seasons. The tree tolerates acid and neutral soils and grows fast for an oak, a metre a year in good ground. It is not for a small garden, since the roots are wide and the crown eventually needs fifteen metres.
Our Take
A fast oak for timber, for mushroom logs and for silk, and one that will outgrow a small plot in a decade. Plant it where the acorns can fall on grass.
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