News from Mount Auburn Cemetery

Horticultural Highlight

Text and Photo by Jim Gorman, Mount Auburn Cemetery Docent

One of the most magnificent of North American trees,

Quercus alba, or White Oak has long been equated with

strength and permanency. Native to a range spanning Maine to

Florida, west of Minnesota and Texas, these trees with a

broad spreading habit have been widely modeled to

symbolize trees in art for centuries.

Deeply rooted in American history from our colonial era - its wood was one of our first profitable

exports. In later years its wood helped build New England's maritime fleet and wealth as well as

portions of the U. S. S. Constitution, today berthed at the Charlestown Navy Yard.

The fruit of the oaks, the well known acorn, may be the most recognizable aspect of these trees.

This nut ž - 1 inch long is enclosed by a chestnut-brown bowl-like cup made of a large number

of small scales which attach acorn to branch stem. It may be twenty to forty years before a tree

produces its first crop of fruit, as many as three or four thousand acorns, but thereafter will bear

heavy crops irregularly. Acorns provide food for Mount Auburn's squirrels, chipmunks, and mice,
as well as for blue jays, crows, brown thrashers, mourning doves, white-breasted nuthatches,
various woodpeckers, and numerous other birds.

During November their autumnal foliage claims the cemetery's landscape stage after most

other deciduous trees' leaves have fallen to the ground. The 4-8 inch long leaves with 5-9 inch

rounded lobes exhibit colors varying from a rich red to a wine color to brown. Often the white

oak loses its leaves begrudgingly somewhere after Thanksgiving, with others clinging to

branches even after winter's first snows fall. Edna St. Vincent Millay captures this best:

"but my heart goes out to the oak leaves that are the last to sigh 'Enough' and lose their

hold." Earlier in the year these leaves were eaten by numerous moth larvae including

imperial, polyphomus, luna, rosy maple and the more destructive winter and gypsy. Also,

butterly larvae such as striped hairstreak, Edward's hairstreak, and juvenal's dusky wing

fed on these leaves.

White oak leaves are also found carved onto numerous monuments throughout the cemetery

serving as symbols of eternity, honor, strength, endurance and even husbands. White oaks are

long-lived, one in Buena Vista, Virginia is more than 460 years old. Of the more than seventy white oaks at Mount Auburn we have six that pre-date the cemetery's 1831 founding. On your next trip here visit one or all of our over two-hundred year old white oaks found on Primrose Path, Indian Ridge Path, Rosebay Path, Pyrola Path, Bellwort Path, and Magnolia Avenue.

Learn more about Mount Auburn's horticultural collections.

View more plants adding color and interest to Mount Auburn each fall.

"Big Trees at Mount Auburn" and "Unusual Trees of Mount Auburn" maps are available for

purchase at the Mount Auburn Entrance Gate and in the Visitors Center.

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