Keyed Out #064 — Quercus rubra

Question 1

One tree carries both sexes: the male flowers hang in slender drooping tassels shedding wind-borne pollen, while the females are minute and sit singly or in twos in the leaf axils rather than being gathered into a tassel of their own.

Accepted Answer

beech family

Question 2

Its fruit is a single hard one-seeded nut whose base is gripped in a woody cup built from many fused {bracts}, a cup that never splits open to release it.

Accepted Answer

Fagaceae

Question 3

Each twig ends not in a single bud but in a tight cluster of several buds crowded around the very tip.

Accepted Answer

Quercus

Question 4

Its blades are cut into distinct lobes by bays running a third to half the way in toward the {midrib}, rather than running out to a plain toothed or untoothed edge.

Accepted Answer

Quercus

Question 5

Its bark ridges are long, flat-topped and unbroken, each carrying a smooth paler shiny stripe down the centre that runs the whole height of the trunk, and the layer just beneath the surface is pale rather than orange-yellow.

Accepted Answer

Quercus rubra

Question 6

Every lobe on the blade narrows to a sharp point finished with a fine hair-like bristle, instead of ending blunt and rounded.

Accepted Answer

Quercus rubra