Bur Oak

Quercus macrocarpa

Hosts 1 caterpillarBird foodPollinator plant

Growing it

When	Flowers in May; fruits September to October
Type	tree
Sun	Full sun, partial shade
Water	Low, medium
Soil	pH 5.5–7.5
Hardiness	zone 2–8
Mature height	18 m
Mature spread	15 m
Spacing	10 m
Years to maturity	30
Bloom	May
In bloom	May
Fruit	Sep–Oct
Native to	SK

lobed leaves about 20 cm long; a spreading, branching crown

Where it has been recorded

BothSpecimensObservations

38 squares of about 28 km, each holding at least one record. A square is not a claim that the plant grows throughout it, and an unshaded square is unrecorded rather than empty. Darker squares hold more records, which follows roads and towns as much as it follows the plant. 6 herbarium specimens and 110 field observations this project may redraw. A filled dot is a pressed sheet somebody can re-examine; a hollow ring is a photograph identified by community agreement. Where the dots are dense is where people have looked, not where the plant is commonest, and empty ground is unsurveyed rather than unoccupied. How this map is made.

Which ecoregions the records fall in

Aspen Parkland central AB / SK: 138 records, high confidence
Moist Mixed Grassland south AB / SK: 62 records, high confidence
Boreal Transition central AB / SK: 10 records, medium confidence

These are counts of records collected somewhere in the region, which is the resolution of the evidence: the map above shows where inside it. A region with 3 records is not the same claim as one with three hundred, so the count travels with the region. A region missing from this list means nobody has recorded it there, which is not the same as the plant being absent. Records within 900 m of a border count for neither side, because the border is not drawn finely enough to say which one they are on. Source: GBIF occurrence search + PRESERVED_SPECIMEN pass, retrieved 2026-08-24. Boundaries digitised from the National Ecological Framework for Canada v2.2 (Ecological Stratification Working Group 1995), simplified to about 900 m for display: an outline is accurate to roughly a kilometre, not to the metre. How these counts are made.

See every observation, live and current, on GBIF or iNaturalist.

Documented animals

3 documented relationships.

caterpillar host for

Banded Tussock Moth Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Northern Paper Wasp Specimen records from iNaturalist.org

seed for

Blue Jay Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Also worth knowing

Safety

Toxicity not assessed, absence of a warning is not a guarantee of safety

Edible parts

Nuts (acorns, leached)

Buying it

About $60–$150 per plant (estimate), usually from a native-plant nursery. Estimate (large specimen tree); AB retail as of 2026