Oak woodland

Oak woodland in Lake County, Illinois.

An oak woodland is a plant community with a tree canopy dominated by oaks (Quercus spp.). In terms of canopy closure, oak woodlands are intermediate between oak savanna, which is more open, and oak forest, which is more closed.^[1] Although the community is named for the dominance of oak trees, the understory vegetation is often diverse and includes many species of grasses, sedges, forbs, ferns, shrubs, and other plants.

Examples

• Upper Midwestern United States oak woodlands dominated by white oak (Quercus alba), burr oak (Q. macrocarpa), and black oak (Q. velutina), with subdominant canopy species red oak (Q. rubra) and shagbark hickory (Carya ovata), with a diverse understory. The community is fire-dependent, shaped by annual, low-intensity fires.^[1]
• Cork oak (Quercus suber) woodlands in the Mediterranean region.
• Blue oak woodland is found in the inner coast ranges and the Sierra Nevada foothills in California, surrounding the Central Valley.^[2] Primary species are blue oak (Q. douglasii) and interior live oak (Q. wizlizeni), with gray pine (Pinus sabiniana), California buckeye (Aesculus californica), and western redbud (Cercis occidentalis). Blue oak woodlands cover about 2,939,000 acres (11,890 km²) of the state of California, and of this area about 79%, or 2,322,000 acres (9,400 km²), shows no evidence of past cutting of trees.^[3]

See also

• Oak savanna
• Oak–heath forest
• Foloi oak forest

References