FAGACEAE - - Beech Family

Quercus lyrata Walter — Overcup Oak

Overcup Oak (Quercus lyrata) - Tree becoming 35 m. tall, the bark gray, often red-tinged, broken into thick plates; leaf-blades obovate or spatulate in outline, 9—17 cm. long, white-tomentose beneath, or glabrate and green, lyrate-pinnatifid, with 7—9 lobes; acorn short-stalked; cup hemispheric or depressed-globose, 20—40 mm. wide; nut ovoid and slightly exserted or spheroidal and nearly or wholly included in the cup.

Habitat:

Seasonally rather deeply and frequently flooded soils of floodplains of the Coastal Plain, less commonly in seasonally flooded swamps in Triassic basins in the lower Piedmont, and rarely in upland depression swamps of the Piedmont (developed over clays weathered from mafic rocks) and Coastal Plain. Of our oaks, Q. lyrata tolerates the wettest habitats, both in terms of depth and duration of flooding.

Habitat information from:
Weakley, Alan S., Flora of the Southern and Mid-Atlantic States, Working Draft of 21 May 2015.

The range of Quercus lyrata (Overcup Oak)

Kartesz, J.T., The Biota of North America Program (BONAP). 2015. North American Plant Atlas. (http://bonap.net/napa). Chapel Hill, N.C. [maps generated from Kartesz, J.T. 2015. Floristic Synthesis of North America, Version 1.0. Biota of North America Program (BONAP). (in press)].

The Georgia range of Quercus lyrata (Overcup Oak)

Zomlefer, W.B., J.R. Carter, & D.E. Giannasi. 2014 (and ongoing). The Atlas of Georgia Plants. University of Georgia Herbarium (Athens, Georgia) and Valdosta State University Herbarium (Valdosta, Georgia). Available at: http://www.georgiaherbaria.org/.