Mexican Royal Oak

One specimen growing well for ten years in south Louisiana.
Beautiful tree! Evergreen with gorgeous red new foliage. Flowers ever...Read Morey year, sets some fruit, and then one after another the acorns seem to wither away. Disheartening. Forty feet away a Q. polymorpha is thriving in the same heavy acidic soil and produces many viable seeds yearly.
I am finally going to add mulch and fertilizer to the germana- hope that I don't jinx it.

Nov. 2016 finally- three mature acorns- huge- added photo
hundreds of fruits did not make it past 5/8" for unknown reasons- perhaps maturity of specimen?

There's an interesting feature of the acorns I noticed this year. Normally, an acorn contains two cotyledons, joined by a common shoot. Q...Read More. germana acorns are not like this. They do seem to have two cotyledons, but each has its own sprout. The leaf end of the sprout is at the center by the proximal end of the acorn. The root emerges out of the side of the acorn, diagonally outward and distally from the leaf end.

Synonyms:
germana subsp eugermana A.Camus 1939 nom. inval. ;
germana var. echinata Trel. 1924
germana subsp subsqua...Read Morerrosa A.Camus 1935

Local names: Mexican royal oak

Range: East and N.E. Mexico; 800-1800 m;

Growth habit: reaches 25 m tall, but much smaller in cultivation;

Leaves 9-13 x 3-5 cm; persistent or semi-evergreen; oblong to oboval or oblanceolate; apex acute sometimes shortly acuminate; base rounded, sometimes cordate or auricled, often assymetrical; margin revolute, entire except near apex where they are slightly toothed; lustrous, green, glabrous above; blue-green, minutely tomentose beneath; petiole 0.5-1.5 cm long, glabrous;

Flowers: pistillate inflorescence 1-1.5 cm long, with 1 cup;

Fruits: acorn subglobose 2-4 cm long, 2,2 cm in diameter; single on a short peduncle; almost all the nut enclosed by cup; cup subglobose, warty, pubescent, 2.5-3.5 cm in diameter; maturing first year;

Bark, twigs and buds: twig greyish, glabrous, with numerous prominent lenticels; bud hairy, 3 mm long;

Hardiness zone, habitat: hardy (withstands -15° C); wet forests;

I have 3 seedlings I raised this spring '11. Very pretty and promising so far.