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March 2026: Bur Oak
- TreesLexington Staff
- Apr 9
- 2 min read
By Andy Mead
Our Tree of the Month for March is the bur oak, which is Lexington’s official tree. This article will begin with one particular bur oak, which is informally known as The Marybeth McAlister Memorial Bur Oak. The tree is in my back yard. Marybeth McAlister was my wife. Several months after she died in early 2014, my friend Rob Pokorney planted a tiny tree that he had sprouted from an acorn. Rob said the acorn had good genes; it was from a centuries-old tree near the Fayette-Jessamine County line.
This summer the tree will have been in the ground for a dozen years. What was a short, scrawny seedling now is more than 25 feet tall. For the last four summers it has produced acorns. An offspring that found its way into a flowerbed is now approaching five feet in height.
I sometimes think about the Marybeth tree when I’m helping Trees Lexington plant a small oak somewhere in town, or when I see someone leaving one of our giveaways with an oak in one hand and a bag of mulch in the other. Little trees grow quickly, and usually don’t have the transplant shock that can slow down larger balled and burlaped trees.
A University of Kentucky extension service publication calls Bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa) “the classic North American savanna tree.” It was an important part of the landscape of spread-out trees that greeted the first Europeans to venture into the Bluegrass. Some of those trees are still standing. The Kentucky champion (a former national champ) bur oak in Bourbon County fits that bill. There is a large bur oak at McConnell Springs Park. There’s another ancient tree in the parking structure of the CHU Saint Joseph Health Office Park on Harrodsburg Road and another in Veterans Park that has a plaque.
Because the species is not reseeding itself as fast as individuals are dying, planting bur oak in the landscape is encouraged.The extension service notes that a mature tree can be too big for most home landscapes (I have a large yard). It’s a great tree for parks. It has a long tap root, which makes it difficult to transplant, and adds to the attraction of planting them small.
Bur oaks tolerate urban pollution. Some insects attack them but, like most oaks, they support many beneficial insects and other wildlife. The bur oak is easily identifiable by its large leaves and the largest acorns of any oak (macrocarpa in its latin name means “large fruit.”) The “bur” (also spelled “burr”) in its common name comes from the fringe on its acorns that resembles a chestnut bur. The acorn fringe is also the reason a bur oak is sometimes called the mossy cup oak.
Here are links to more information about bur oaks:
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