Northern red oak vs. Scarlet oak

[Dodgy Loner]

Northern red oak and scarlet oak are two of the most easily confused oaks in the eastern U.S.  They share much of their range and many key characteristics, and they often occur together on the same site.  Both have relatively smooth bark, with shallow furrows and long, vertical white streaks between the furrows.  Both have large acorns and large, glabrous leaves, usually with 7-9 lobes.  However, by paying attention to a few key characteristics, it's quite easy to separate the two, even in the winter time.  WDH has already offered an excellent tutorial on scarlet oak, but I thought it might be helpful to see both trees side-by-side.

Northern red oak

A large tree, often 70-90 feet tall and 2-3 feet in diameter, although occasionally much larger.  The Georgia champion is in Sosebee Cove and measures 4.9 feet in diameter and 126 feet tall (guess who found it ;D).  Northern red oak is one of the most important red oaks for timber production, as it is usually a well-formed tree with a straight trunk:


In second-growth forests, however, it's easy to find heavily tapered, leaning trees with multiple trunks.  This is the result of profuse stump sprouting after the parents were harvested.  The white stripes on northern red oakbark usually extend down within 1 or 2 feet of ground level:


When observing the leaves of a northern red oak, it is important to consider whether they are sun leaves (from the crown) or shade leaves (from the understory).  The sinuses between the lobes of a sun leaf usually extend about halfway to the midrib (the main vein), and the petioles are often reddish:


In shade leaves, the sinuses are very shallow, and the petioles are rarely reddish:


The acorns of northern red oaks are usually more than 1" long, and they have a very small, saucer-shaped cap that covers less than 1/4 of the acorn:


Scarlet oak
Scarlet oak reaches approximately the same size as northern red oak.  The Georgia champion is an open-grown tree, 6.6 feet in diameter and 70 feet tall.  Forest grown trees sometimes reach 100-120'.  Form is usually considered to be poorer than northern red oak.  It often holds onto dead limbs for a long time and rarely grows straight:


However, form varies widely from tree to tree.  This scarlet oak is 3.5 feet in diameter, 120 feet tall, and nearly 70 feet to the nearest limb.


The white streaks on scarlet oaks usually stop around 6-12' from the ground.  Below this point, the bark is blocky:


The sun leaves of scarlet oak have very long petioles, and are deeply lobed, with the sinuses extending nearly to the midrib:


Shade leaves have shorter petioles and shallower sinuses.  The sinuses usually extend about halfway to the midrib, much like northern red oak shade leaves.  This is why it is important to consider where the leaves came from:


Scarlet oak acorns are usually about 1" long, with a bowl-shaped cap that encloses about half of the acorn:

[scgargoyle]

Thanks for the side-by-side comparison, DL, It certainly helps us newbies figger out what we have on our woodlot. From what you've shown, I'd say  my biggest trees are scarlets. Mine are up to 24" DBH, and nice and tall and straight. They're near the top of the hill- does that make sense? I've got several other oak sp., as well as a couple hickories. Our land is in SC, within spittin' distance of the mountains.

[Dodgy Loner]

Makes perfect sense, scgargoyle.  Scarlet oak prefers somewhat drier soils than northern red.  It's most common from midslope to hilltop.  On the hilltops, it'll outnumber northern reds by a wide margin.  Northern red prefers more mesic sites, from midslope right down to the edge of river bottoms (as long as it doesn't get its feet wet).

[WDH]

Excellent comparison, DL.  Northern Red Oak will compete better on an good site than will Scarlet Oak, so Scarlet is sometimes resigned to the drier sites with shallower soils. 

The lobes are a little different too.  There seems to be more bristle tips on Scarlet oak lobes than on Northern Red.  The Scarlet lobes seem to be more divided (developed) with the Northern Red being more simple and less divided.  That difference is easily seen in Dodgy Loner's pics.

[SwampDonkey]

Some of those shade leaves of Dodgy's scarlet oak sure look like the ones on my seedlings. And the fall foliage is much more brilliant red than my red oaks. We's gonna solve this mystery soon.  ;D

[WDH]

SD,

I still think that what you have there is Northern Red Oak.

[Dodgy Loner]

I'm inclined to agree with WDH.  Those are prolly northern red leaves.  Seedlings are always sneakier than mature trees, though.

[SwampDonkey]

You guys aren't going to let me have my scarlet oak are ya's?   :D :D :D :D

[Dodgy Loner]

Kind begets kind.  Do you have any mature scarlet oaks in the immediate areas?

[SwampDonkey]

DL, no scarlet here. I am told there are some at Bear Island campground, where the seed are supposed to have been collected from. I will be investigating some more.  Scarlet is not native here. Not that it means anything, I have brought white oak seedlings from NH and I have a nice white oak on the lawn now. ;) That was 20 years ago I planted it. 1 out of 3 survived.

[WDH]

We could send you some scarlet oak acorns if we could rescue any from the marauding squirrels .  Lanier Lurker probably has a sackful with all the scarlet oaks on his place.

[Lanier_Lurker]

There are many acorns under the "graveyard oak" in https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?topic=26147.0

I could probably get some from there.

In my immediate vicinity I just have the 2 trees mentioned in https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?topic=25020.0

There don't seem to be any acorns around them.  And I could not be certain they were scarlet if there were any - what with all the other oaks around.

[WDH]

The single tree in the graveyard would be a good choice because they would be easy to see and there would not be as many squirrels to nab them one by one as they fall.

[SwampDonkey]

I wouldn't collect those last years crop though. Wait for the new crop to ripen this year. I'm told the large nut trees have seed that is viable a short time. Just guessing, but by mid summer if they didn't germinate the warm temps have probably nuked the embryo. There are exceptions of course, but why not get fresh seed. ;)

[Lanier_Lurker]

The "graveyard" scarlet oak did not make a nut crop this year - which is not surprising since it seems to have made a large crop last year.  Hopefully next year.....

Turns out I have more scarlet oak in my area than I realized.  Their brilliant fall color combined with their tendency to hold their leaves much longer than other hardwoods makes them really pop out this time of year.  I eventually found one that made a decent nut crop.  SD, we will try to get some acorns to you in time for spring planting.

[Phorester]

In Virginia, scarlet oak quite often has a swollen base to the trunk. The base is knotty and peppered with holes.  Kinda like a bad burl right at the ground line and extending up for 1 - 2 feet. Most researchers say this is caused by the chestnut blight fungus.

It's pretty much worthless here for sawtimber.  Medium worth for wildlife.  Good, of course, for firewood.

[WDH]

It is, as Swamp has pointed out, a very pretty oak in Fall color. 

[scgargoyle]

In Virginia, scarlet oak quite often has a swollen base to the trunk. The base is knotty and peppered with holes.  Kinda like a bad burl right at the ground line and extending up for 1 - 2 feet. Most researchers say this is caused by the chestnut blight fungus.

It's pretty much worthless here for sawtimber.  Medium worth for wildlife.  Good, of course, for firewood.

What makes it worthless- the swollen base? Or is scarlet oak just useless in general? I have quite a bit- I was thinking of trying to use some for flooring in my house- random width, rustic type stuff. I've noticed a number of smaller ones on my property with the swollen base, but the bigger ones (24"dbh) look normal.

[WDH]

SC,

Down our way it can make a pretty nice tree.  Scarlet does not self prune as well as many oaks, so it can be limby, especially on a poor site.  In your part of the country where it is well adapted, similar to the slope and elevation that Lanier Lurker is at, Scarlet can make some nice lumber.  I sawed one up over Thanksgiving and it had character ;). 

I say go for it!!

[scgargoyle]

Well, we'll know once we start opening 'em up. The trees have to go anyway to make room for the house. Mine have long straight trunks, and the branching is high up. I wouldn't mind a few knots for character.

[Phorester]

WDH pretty much covered the problems we have with scarlet oak up here.  The biggest problem is all those dead limbs up and down the entire trunk.  Makes for loose knots if sawn into lumber.   Plus, it just doesn't grow straight here.  Add in the swollen butt......, low to no timber value.

Got a new digital camera for Christmas. My last one got crushed in the thigh pocket in my pants where I carried it during work.  Might try to get some pictures of our scarlet oaks on here after I wade through the 90 page instruction manual.

[WDH]

I found a nice Shumard today on my Dad's property.  I was just walking around looking at the timber when I noticed these big acorns with shallow acorn cups like on Northern Red Oak.  It was a Shumard Oak about 24" in diameter. 

Shumard is like a Scarlet Oak with a Northern Red Oak acorn. 

This one in the pic below was the Georgia State Champion until a micro-burst thunderstorm blew it down this summer.  There is a white one foot engineers scale for perspective.  This one was a little shy of 5 feet in diameter, but it was 141 feet tall.

[SwampDonkey]

That's a beaut', wish I had a few acres of'm.  ;) Our northern red oak up here needs to grow in a bit of competition to grow straight. If there is very little competition it gets real big limbs that grow straight out and not so much upward. Then the tree will develop a fast taper and be rather short and squatty with open crown. A sugar maple is a more desirable yard tree. In the forest though, the red oaks grow nice and straight and prune well up here.

[Lanier_Lurker]

Danny, what county was that big Shumard in?

[WDH]

Houston County.  There is another one in the same bottomland that is very close to this one, but it is about 15 points shy of champion status. 

[Gary_C]

Thought I would add some pictures of Northern Red Oaks from Northern MN. I took these pictures while walking a marked sale back in 2002. Location is in the St. Croix State Forest north of state hwy 48 between Hinckley, MN and Danbury, WI.

There are some nice red oaks in this area, but by the time you get 40 miles north of there, the quality drops dramatically and you get a lot of frost cracks.






Obviously not all red oak.



I did not buy this particular sale but the species normally included in these hardwood thinnings in the area are Red Oak, Sugar Maple, Red Maple, and Basswood. There will also be Birch and Aspen.

The forester that marked this sale does an excellent job of marking the sale as he scales it. Obviously the L is for log, V is for veneer, and the line or slash is just pulp logs.

[SwampDonkey]

A fellow has to be pretty confident about the inside of a tree to be marking "L" or "V" on them. They just get dots or lines here (if they are marked). In NB, what looks like a perfect 18" maple tree often is black in the heart or hollow.  :(

[Gary_C]

A fellow has to be pretty confident about the inside of a tree to be marking "L" or "V" on them.

I've thought that too, but it really is not true, because of other factors. It is true that you do not know what is inside, especially on the Hard Maple. But The DNR always has low base prices and normally will be under the actual scale by about 10-15 percent. But regardless, you need to look at the trees yourself and those markings give you an excellent vision of what the forester was thinking when he appraised the stand and you can bid or not accordingly.

This forester is one of the few that do mark that L or V and I have learned that his judgment is good and I never come up short on his jobs. The trees that he marks as logs that are not are offset by the logs he marks as pulp that have good logs.

[Old Greenhorn]

I'm gonna take a shot and resurrect this thread as I was about to pose the exact question it addresses. But I did a search and found this thread which answers a great deal of my questions. So thanks for anticipating my needs by more than ten years.

I stopped on a work-site a logger friend was doing and commented that one of the red oaks he had would make some nice lumber. (Maybe I was hunting around to see if he might make me a deal on it.) Nice straight 40' stem with no knots I could see. He shook his head and said "Nope that will be great firewood, it's scarlet oak, not red oak and no mill will buy it." I felt a little stupid and wondered if he was pulling my leg as he often does.
Now all of the oak that I get has either storm damaged blowdowns, or cut several years ago and left. There are no leaves or acorns available. Is there anyway to ID these logs?
Now I am not particular like a mill would be, but I am wondering what is the real difference between the two with respect to strength and lumber quality/appearance? (I read the comments about knots in scarlet, but I just milled a beaut of a log that I THINK was scarlet and it was knot free, straight and made beautiful boards and one large timber. If I knew anything about grading I would call it perfect.

So what is the functional difference between these two and why don't the mills around here want it?

[nativewolf]

It will make ok lumber, just likely to have more knots and other defects.  If you want beams, no problem I'd think but Don or Danny might offer different advice.  When we sell it the buyer discounts.  Bridge timber is a good market for those long scarlet and black oaks.  Black oak has even more defect in my opinion (having cut a good many fence boards 2 years ago from black, red, pin, and scarlet.  Pin oak was messy too.  Really a question of yield and do they want to mess with it.

[Don P]

Scarlet does tend to hold its dead limbs and often has poorer form, slightly coarser grain, more likely to have borers or other defects but a good log is a good log. As far as strength northern red is to oak what longleaf is to pine. In bending a #1 northern has Fb1350psi, scarlet falls in two groupings.. mixed oak at 1150 or red oak also 1150. Stiffness, northern red 1.3, mixed 1.0 and red 1.2. For a longer span floorboard, joist or rafter that might come into play and is often the control, well more than adequate for your 5/4 diagonal laid floorboards on typical centers. Horizontal shear is an even larger spread although usually only a structural control on a shorter, VERY heavily loaded beam, northern red at 205 psi, mixed and red at 155 psi. So if you are building a church belltower wait for a northern, other than that if it is a good log and for structural run the numbers. If it is just for pretty grab it.