Trees That Please Nursery: 30 Days of Fall Foliage, Monday November 12th.

Escarpment Live Oak

New Mexico Live Oak (Quercus fusiformis), also known as Escarpment Live Oak, is a New Mexico native evergreen oak. New Mexico Live Oak has thick glossy green leaves. Its leaf structure varies, from smooth or pointed margins, sometimes even on the same tree. New Mexico Live Oak can have annual growth of up to 4’ per year often reaching 15’ - 20′ or more in height and width. The wild growth form is multi-trunked but if pruned to a single trunk can exceed 20’.

New Mexico Live Oak is very heat and drought tolerant and is best grown in well-drained soils but will tolerate clay. This evergreen oak does well with low to regular water and is hardy to USDA Zone 6.

As an evergreen oak there is no color change associated with fall. Both mature

and young trees retain their leaves through winter.

Some trees may have a few older leaves that turn yellow or red. Escarpment Live Oak acorns also ripen in fall.

If you look closely leaf veins are usually reddish in the fall also.

This green foliage provides winter interest in your landscape while deciduous trees have lost their leaves exposing branch framework. The New Mexico Live Oak on the other hand looks “alive” all winter.

Contact Trees That Please Nursery for more information, availability, and pricing.

Photos & Narrative By:

Stephen Sain
Staff Plant Physiologist

Comments

Desert Dweller said…

And I know I'm in Valencia County when I drive down a residential street and see a few Quercus fusiformis, but hardly one (struggling, hatin' life) aspen. Abq has a way to go on the above order, but it's starting to change.

November 12, 2012 at 2:02 PM

Weed Identification: Goatheads or Stickers

Goatheads ( Tribulus terrestris ) are native to Southern Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. Goatheads are also called stickers, sticker weed, bullhead, devil’s weed, and puncturevine. Goatheads are easily recognized by their prostrate growth form, leaves with leaflets, yellow flowers, and stickers (Goatheads). If you miss’em visually then they will stab you painfully in the fingers as you work your garden, or stick to your clothing and shoes. Goatheads are the primary reason local bicyclists must get “thorn proof” tires for riding on area trails and streets. Goatheads have prostrate stems that radiate outward from one central point. Leaves are compound with smaller leaflets. Lemon yellow flowers form along the stems and fertilized flowers form fruits. Fruits consist of several attached structures called nutlets (Goatheads). Each nutlet is a single seed that becomes hard or woody when mature. Each seed has two sharp spines that easily pene...

All About the Shantung Maple!

The Shantung Maple ( Acer truncatum ) is also known as the Purple Blow Maple due to the color of its newly emerging leaves which are red-purple (see photo below). These young expanding red-purple leaves change to green as they mature. Leaves are small, about the size of Japanese Red Maple leaves, perhaps 3’-4’ wide at maturity. The Shantung Maple grows 1′-2′ annually reaching 25″ tall and wide. This is our tree for all planting situations. This Maple does well in heavy clay, sandy soils, full sun, or part shade. It can be planted in a lawn or next to a hot asphalt street (see photo below). It seemingly is a happy tree enjoying life wherever it is placed. One place we would not recommend planting this tree is in a rockscape which is just too hot and inhospitable to support this beautiful tree. A smaller tree, the Shantung Ma...

How does nitrogen work in the soil, and where does it come from when we don't have a bag of fertilizer to supplement it?

I've spoken many times on this subject at conferences and it was the main theme of my talk when I represented North America at the World's 1st Humus Experts Meeting in Vienna Austria back in 2013. Most of the Nitrogen used by the vast tropical rain forests, or the fastest growing biomass place on Earth, the Coastal Redwood Forests of California, comes from the production of protein by the Free-Living Nitrogen Fixing bacteria in soil and the massive biomass structure of the mycorrhizal fungi. The proteins as it breaks down in the soil into amino acids are the building blocks of life and the explanation of the Soil Food Web. However, in order for those amino acids to enter a plant and be part of the nitrogen budget of the plant they must have the assistance of the mycorrhizal fungi. It's much more efficient for a plant to uptake amino acids whose molecules include nitrogen needed to build tissues than to uptake just nitrogen minus the amino acid. ...

Trees That Please Nursery

Search This Blog