• Home
  • Contact
  • Site Map
George Weigel - Central PA Gardening
  • Landscape 1
  • Landscape 2
  • Landscape 3
  • Landscape 4
  • Garden Drawings
  • Talks & Trips
  • Patriot-News/Pennlive Posts
  • Buy Helpful Info

Navigation

  • Storage Shed (Useful Past Columns)
  • About George
  • Sign Up for George's Free E-Column
  • Plant Profiles
    • Annuals
    • Edibles
    • Roses
    • Bulbs/Corms/Tubers
    • Evergreens/Conifers
    • Flowering shrubs
    • Ornamental Grasses
    • Perennials
    • Trees
      • Redbud 'Appalachian Red'
      • American fringetree
      • Magnolia Little Girls
      • Sweetbay magnolia
      • Crabapple Sugar Tyme
      • River birch Dura Heat
      • Dogwood Aurora
      • Tricolor beech
      • White oak
      • Japanese stewartia
      • Ginkgo 'Princeton Sentry'
      • Purple beech 'Riversii'
      • Black gum 'Wildfire'
      • Trident maple
      • Magnolia 'Bracken's Brown Beauty'
      • American hornbeam
      • Maple Redpointe
      • Redbud
      • Northern red oak
      • Dwarf river birch 'Little King'
      • Seven-son flower
      • Autumn flowering cherry
      • Katsura tree
      • Red maple
      • Sweetgum 'Slender Silhouette'
      • Flowering cherry 'Okame'
      • Pagoda dogwood
      • Fern-leaf full moon maple
      • Ginkgo 'Autumn Gold'
      • Little-leaf linden
      • Dogwood 'Cherokee Chief'
      • Crape myrtle 'Sarah's Favorite' and 'Natchez'
      • Black gum Green Gable and Tupelo Tower
      • Maple Autumn Blaze
      • Weeping beech
      • Kousa dogwood Scarlet Fire
      • Red buckeye
      • Redbud Flame Thrower
      • Swamp white oak
      • Carolina silverbell
      • Cornelian cherry dogwood
      • Crabapple 'Prairifire'
      • Freeman maple Autumn Blaze
      • Japanese tree lilac
      • Korean stewartia
      • Kousa dogwood
      • Paperbark maple
      • Persian parrotia
      • Purple smoketree 'Royal Purple'
      • Serviceberry 'Autumn Brilliance'
      • Weeping cutleaf Japanese maple
      • Weeping katsura Tree
    • Vines
  • Timely Tips
  • George’s Handy Lists
  • George's Friends
  • Photo Galleries
  • Links and Resources
  • Support George’s Efforts


George’s new “50 American Public Gardens You Really Ought to See” e-book steers you to the top gardens to add to your bucket list.

Read More | Order Now





George’s “Pennsylvania Month-by-Month Gardening” helps you know when to do what in the landscape.

Read More | Order Now







George’s “Survivor Plant List” is a 19-page booklet detailing hundreds of the toughest and highest-performing plants.

Click Here






Has the info here been useful? Support George’s efforts by clicking below.




Looking for other ways to support George?

Click Here

Swamp white oak

* Common name: Swamp white oak

Swamp white oak is a native shade tree that’s useful to a variety of wildlife.

* Botanical name: Quercus bicolor

* What they are: Swamp white oak is a long-lived Pennsylvania-native shade tree that’s a good food source for a variety of moth and butterfly caterpillars as well as a good supplier of acorns for small mammals (at least in the years when it produces an acorn crop).

   People benefits include cooling shade in summer and a yellow to orange-gold fall-foliage show. It’s also a solid-enough performer to earn a 2023 Gold Medal Award from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society as a tree deserving more use in home landscapes.

   The bark of swamp white oak is grayish-brown, furrowed, and somewhat peeling, while the leaves have silvery undersides.

* Size: Give this tree plenty of room because the straight species can grow 50 to 60 feet tall and wide in time. Beacon is a narrow variety of swamp white oak that grows about 40 feet tall but only 15 feet wide.

* Where to use: Although swamp white oak prefers damp, acidic, and even wet soil (it’ll survive occasional flooding), it’s adaptable to the drier conditions and clayish soil that’s common in urban and suburban yards. Grows best in full sun.

* Care: Keep the roots consistently damp the first two to three seasons to establish the roots, then soak deeply once a week in extended hot, dry spells. Fertilizer is usually not needed, especially if you’re fertilizing the lawn nearby.

   Pruning is best done in winter to lessen the odds of oak wilt, which is the tree’s main disease threat. Remove crossing or excess branches, and “limb up” the lower branches if needed to walk underneath.

* Great partners: Turtlehead, golden ragwort, Pennsylvania sedge, foamflowers, and crested iris make good native underplantings that also prefer damp conditions. Barrenwort and helleborus are two other non-native groundcover choices. Summersweet and dwarf winterberry holly are two native, damp-preferring shrub partners.


  • Home
  • Garden House-Calls
  • George's Talks & Trips
  • Disclosure

© 2025 George Weigel | Site designed and programmed by Pittsburgh Web Developer Andy Weigel using WordPress