The peculiar drooping foliage of Spanish oak gives the tree a character which impresses a person who sees the full-leafed crown for the first time. The leaves are six or seven inches long and four or five wide. Their forms vary within wide limits, and their shapes change from week to week while growing. Some have no lobes or sinuses, others have them in rudimentary form only, while in still others they are well developed.
The tree is often called red oak, particularly by lumbermen who cut it and send it to market with red oak. In Louisiana it is known as Spanish water oak, there being much resemblance between it and water oak (_Quercus nigra_) with which it is associated. Its range covers more than 200,000 square miles, beginning at the north in New Jersey and following down the coast regions to central Florida. It extends westward into Texas to the valley of the Brazos river; northward to Missouri and southern Indiana and Illinois. It does not grow far inland from the coast in the north Atlantic states, but further south it is common on the coast plain between the sea and the base of the mountains. It is often found on dry sand hills in that region. The largest Spanish oaks on record grew in the lower Ohio valley, particularly along the Wabash river. It is usually of medium size and large trunks are seldom seen. The average height is seventy or eighty feet, diameter two or three. In the open, the crown is broad and low, but in forests the trunk prunes itself fairly well, and makes good saw timber, as far as form and size are concerned. The acorns ripen in two years, and are bitter. The bark is rich in tannin, but tanneries do not use much of it.
The tree is not generally abundant. Some large areas within its range have little, and thick stands are unusual anywhere. It is one of the oaks which lumbermen neither reject nor seek. They cut it in course of operations, and saw it and sell it under the common name, red oak.
The wood is heavy, very hard, and strong. It is reputed to decay more rapidly than most oaks, and it checks badly in seasoning. The annual rings of growth are broad, and the springwood is marked by several rows of large open pores. The medullary rays are few but conspicuous; color light red, the sapwood lighter. The wood weighs about three pounds less than white oak per cubic foot, and its fuel value is less.