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Quercus durata
Leather oak is a low, spreading California shrub in the white oak group, usually 0.5 to 1.5 m tall, grown mainly for hillside and garden planting. It is best suited to a dry, sunny site with nutrient-poor soil.
Quercus durata, commonly known as leather oak, is a species of oak in the white oak group (subgenus Quercus, section Quercus). The common name "leather oak" is derived from the leathery texture on the lop of its leaves.
It is endemic to California, common in the Coast Ranges and the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. It is found nearly exclusively on serpentine soil.
The range of Quercus durata stretches from Shasta County in Northern California to the bottom of the South Coast Range in Santa Barbara County. The most common variant is found in foothill woodlands and chaparral ecosystems at elevations between 30 and 1,570 m (100 to 5,150 ft). It is especially abundant in Sargent cypress (Hesperocyparis sargentii) woodlands which can be found in portions of Mendocino, Sonoma, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties as well as the San Francisco Bay region. In more sheltered, inland areas like MacNab cypress (Hesperocyparis macnabiana) woodlands this shrub can extend into riparian zones where summer fogs persist.
In a study done by Narvaez et al. in 2000 with a group of goats and sheep at the Hopland Research and Extension Center, it was found that for animals employed in vegetation management programs across grass woodlands and chaparral ecosystems nutritional quality and intake levels of Q. durata and Adenostoma fasciculatum foliage were low and demonstrated a need for diet supplementation in livestock performing as part of vegetation control programs.
Quercus affinis · Coast Live Oak · White Oak · Golden Oak · Scrub oak · Brant's oak · Turkey Oak · Canyon Live Oak · Scarlet Oak · Daimyo oak · Blue oak · Northern pin oak
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Quercus durata by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
