Pin Oak
Quercus palustris
A fast, graceful native oak with a straight trunk, a tidy pyramid of drooping lower branches and russet-red fall colour, happy in wet clay where other trees sulk. Plant it in acid soil; alkaline soil yellows its leaves.
- Mature size
- 60 × 40 ft
- 18.5 × 12 m, tall × wide
- Hardiness
- Zones 4a–8b
- USDA
- Sun
- Full sun to part shade
- Water
- Medium to wet
- Fall color
- Oct–Nov
Pin Oak at its mature size
A mature Pin Oak grows 50 to 70 feet tall and 25 to 60 feet wide, taller than most people.
Drawn to scale beside a 5 ft 9 in person. With VeraScape, you see it at this size in your own yard.
Typical mature size, unpruned. Sources: NC State Extension, The Morton Arboretum, The Tree Center, Clemson Extension.
Through the year
What Pin Oak looks like month by month in a typical zone 6–7 garden.
Dormant · Dec–Apr
Bare fine branches, some brown leaves clinging.
In leaf · May–Sep
Deeply lobed glossy green leaves.
Fall · Oct–Nov
Russet to red leaves.
Growing Pin Oak
- Grows well in
- The Northeast, the Midwest, and the Southeast.
- Growth rate
- Fast
- Good for
- Rain garden, fall color, and fast growing
- Leaves
- Drops its leaves in winter
- Native to
- Eastern North America
Spacing
VeraScape spaces plants so their grown canopies just touch. For Pin Oak, that’s about 40 ft apart, center to center.
Place a row in your own yard and VeraScape spaces them at their mature width, so you can see whether they’ll crowd the walk.
See Pin Oak in your yard before you dig
Visualize it at its true size, alongside the rest of your design.
Other oaks
Pin Oak
Red Oak
Shumard Oak
White OakAll drawn to the same scale.