I have planted many species of white oaks in my forest. Included are true white oak, swamp white oak, bur oak, pedunculate oak and chinkapin oak. White oaks hybridize easily and I have planted a number of hybrid white oaks. The naming of hybrids varies and sometimes the name is just a combination of the two white oaks involved. Some hybrids I have planted are Schuette’s Oak which is a cross between a swamp white oak and a bur oak, burenglish oak which is a cross between a bur oak and an english oak, burgamble oak which is a cross between a bur oak and a gamble white oak, and ancestry oak which is a cross between an english oak and a bur oak.

The focus of this post is Saul’s oak which is a cross between a chestnut white oak and a white oak. I have purchased Saul’s oaks from Oikos tree crops out of Michigan. Oikos had a lot of very interesting hybrid oaks. However they are no longer selling seedlings. Back to Saul’s oak. Look at the picture below of the great color of the new spring leaves. I would say the color is burgundy red.

Another picture below of the same tree with beautiful color.

Besides the great color I have found that Saul’s oak grow extremely fast. I have some pictures of Saul’s oaks below showing how fast they have grown out of tree tubes. Unfortunately I only started planting Saul’s oaks around 2019. So I don’t know what a more mature tree looks like.

The picture above is a Sauls oak about 5 years old which is around 16 feet tall. The white pole standing next to it is 16 feet tall.

This is a 3 year old Saul’s oak in a 6 foot tree tube. Again very fast growing.

Another Saul’s oak, this one about 4 or 5 years old growing in a six foot tree tube. Below is a very good description of Saul’s oak from Oikos Tree Crops.

Rather rare in cultivation Sauls oak has great potential for a variety of uses-timber, mast and ornamental. Finding mature hybrid trees in southwestern Michigan was not likely so I created my own using acorns purchased from a collector who found many Quercus prinus in a park in Pennsylvania. There was quite a mix of both white oak, bur oak and chestnut oak in that particular area. The collector did a fantastic job and collected some of the best chestnut oak acorns I have seen. In time I began thinning the trees when they began shading each other out as I was selling the trees for the nursery. You could begin to see the hybrids in the population as the leaves are lobed. It is a common hybrid in certain locations.  Finally I then selected the  best of the white and bur oak hybrids within these chestnut oaks. I  continue this process today as the planting slowly becomes over grown and the individual trees need more room to develop their crowns and produce acorns. Today the trees remain one of my most vigorous plantings and I am preparing to plant underneath them various shade loving perennials. 

Sauls oak represents a very wide range of oaks that show excellent hybrid vigor, good acorn production and the ability to tolerate a wide range of soils from alkaline to acidic. Like chestnut oak, the wood quality is very good especially the crosses with white oak. The trees show remarkable foliage and certainly selections could be done with this cross. It also would be good to produce as a seed strain and further work could be done to make populations of them and reselect for even more vigorous trees. Once again a tree species that shows us the way but will we follow?