• What Eats Blackjack Oak Lawn
• What Eats Blackjack Oak Run

An oak blackjack(o) is a members-only melee weapon mainly used to lure/knockout NPCs. There are no level requirements for wielding this blackjack. To obtain one, the player must have completed the blackjack section of the Rogue Trader minigame. There are three NPCs that can be lured/knocked out with this blackjack: villagers, bandits and Menaphite Thugs, all located in Pollnivneach.

• The oak tree leaf is broad, thin and flat and is called a broadleaf. The shape of the leaf may be ovate, obovate and sometimes, elliptic. Oak tree leaves may be deeply pinnatifid-like seen in Canada. The characteristic features in an oak leaf are its lobes and sinuses (space between the lobes). The number of lobes may be from 5 up to 20 in a leaf.
• Bark of a medium-sized tree. Orange Co., NC 4/12/08. Staminate flowers with Blackjack Oak tree in background. Orange Co., NC 4/12/08.

The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture does not promote, support or recommend plants featured in 'Plant of the Week.' Please consult your local Extension office for plants suitable for your region.

Blackjack Oak
Latin: Quercus marilandica

This summer’s drought has been tough on trees. The drive between Fayetteville and Little Rock is punctuated with whole hillsides of brown and seemingly lifeless trees.
While these trees - mostly oaks, hickories, dogwoods and elms - look bad from a distance, most will survive the rigors of the 2000 drought without much problem. Summers like this help one appreciate the really tough trees such as the blackjack oak.
A kid I knew in my youth was scrappy and always getting into fights. His favorite saying was, 'When you’re ugly you gotta be tough.' Mother Nature has applied this simple truism to the blackjack oak because it is one ugly, but tough tree.
Blackjacks are found throughout most of the eastern woodlands, occupying sites with soil too poor or dry for oaks with more stature and substance to flourish. It was one of the few tree species to venture onto the Great Plains before white settlement, occupying a region from central Texas northeast through Oklahoma known as the cross timber region.
The blackjack is a small, gnarly tree usually under 35 feet tall with a round crown and leathery, three-lobed leaves. It is a member of the red oak tribe and has the characteristic leaf spine at the end of each lobe. The leaves hang on the tree through the winter to be pushed off by new leaves the following spring. It’s trunk is often deeply furrowed and black, giving it a brooding wintertime appearance.
The Rodney Dangerfield of oaks, blackjacks are given but one use - firewood - by most authors who seem overly hung up on the notion that all oaks reach the pinnacle of their glory at the saw mill.
It might be instructive to speculate on the long term effects of this summer’s drought on the survival and health of the forest. As bad as the trees look, most will survive the drought because they have been forced into an early dormancy to conserve water.
Unfortunately, that is not the end of the story. The oaks of our eastern forest are systemically infected with a fungus called Hypoxylon canker - sort of the athlete’s foot of the oak kingdom.
Survey work conducted by Dr. Pat Finn at the UofA following the severe drought of 1980 showed that about 80 percent of the oaks of northwest Arkansas have this systemic infection. This fungus is usually benign and does no apparent harm, but droughts cause it to flare up. Certain trees -- with no discernable pattern -- are killed by the multiplying hyphae of the fungus as it produces its spores on fungal mats under the bark of the tree. These fungal mats push the bark off which accumulates at the base of the tree like a rain of deadly dandruff.
For the health of the forest, Hypoxylon is a beneficial fungus because it thins the stand of trees. In 1980, the disease killed about 12 percent of the oaks in some areas, thus allowing the survivors more opportunity to obtain water.
Unfortunately most of us that build our homes in the woodland have difficulty taking the long view on ecology when the tree in front of our house is the one that dies. About all that can be done to ward off the effects of this problem is to keep the drought at bay by watering before conditions become too severe.
Blackjacks are not in the nursery trade and many who have them on their property treat them with little respect. But, before dismissing this tough tree as a scrub oak and relegating it to the woodpile, reflect on its toughness and adaptability under adverse conditions.

What Eats Blackjack Oak Lawn

By: Gerald Klingaman, retired
Extension Horticulturist - Ornamentals
Extension News - September 22, 2000

The University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture does not maintain lists of retail outlets where these plants can be purchased. Please check your local nursery or other retail outlets to ask about the availability of these plants for your growing area.

What Eats Blackjack Oak Run

Quercus marilandica, the blackjack oak, is a small oak, one of the red oak groupQuercus sect. Lobatae. It is native to the eastern and central United States, from Long Island to Florida, west as far as Texas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. There are reports of a few isolated populations in southern Michigan, but these appear to represent introductions.^[5][6]

Quercus marilandica is a small deciduoustree growing to 15 meters (49 feet) tall, with bark cracked into rectangular black plates with narrow orange fissures. The leaves are 7–20 cm (3–8 in) long and broad, and typically flare from a tapered base to a broad three-lobed bell shape with only shallow indentations. They are dark green and glossy above, pubescent underneath, and often remain attached to the twigs through the winter after turning colors from red to brown in the fall. The acorn is small, 12–20 mm (0.47–0.79 in) long and 10–18 mm (0.39–0.71 in) broad; like other red oaks, it takes 18 months to mature.^[7]

Habitat and distribution[edit]

The blackjack oak grows in poor, thin, dry, rocky or sandy soils where few other woody plants can thrive, usually on low ground, from sea level up to approximately 2,800 feet (850 meters) in altitude. Some commentators say that it does not have the beautiful form of many oaks, but is nonetheless a valuable tree for growing in problem sites.^[8] Some say that the tree is 'tough but ugly', but also underappreciated.^[9][10] At times the tree has even been actively eradicated to provide room for trees deemed to be more commercially valuable.^[11]

It is sometimes an understory tree in pine stands on sandy knolls in the southeastern US. Along the coastal plain of New Jersey the probability of finding this species is increased in relatively sunny, open areas such as those near coastal salt marshes. It often occurs near scarlet and post oaks as well as pitch pine; understory companions include winged sumac, bracken, sweetfern, and bayberry, and can be found as far north as parts of Ohio^[12] and New York.

A variety, Quercus marilandica Münchhausen var. asheiSudworth,^[7] grows in the western portions of its range – northern Texas, Oklahoma, and into southern Kansas. In this area, blackjack and post oak form a semi-savanna area composed of forested strips intermixed with prairie grass glades along the eastern edge of the southern Great Plains. This semi-savanna is known as the Cross Timbers.^[13][14][15] Scrub forms of Q. marilandica dominate on many chert glades along with Q.stellata in Arkansas's Ozark plateau.^[16]

Blackjack oak sometimes hybridizes with bear oak (Quercus ilicifolia), forming a hybrid known as Q. × brittonii.^[17]

Blackjacks in the Cross Timbers can grow from 50 to 60 feet (15 to 18 m) high with a trunk diameter of 16 inches (41 cm), but seldom reach more than 40 feet (12 m). The leaves are from 4 to 10 inches (10 to 25 cm) in length and about the same width. Blackjack acorns provide food for both whitetail deer and wild turkey. Blackjacks may, however, cause tannic acid poisoning in cattle.

Uses[edit]

The wood is very dense and produces a hot flame when burned, which functions as an excellent source of heat for barbecues and wood-burning stoves. However, the wood is not desirable for wood fireplaces because the heat causes popping, thereby increasing the risk of house fires.^[18]

Traditionally blackjack wood is used as both a fuel and smoke wood for barbecue in Oklahoma.

References[edit]

1. ^Wenzell, K.; Kenny, L. (2015). 'Quercus marilandica'. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2015. Retrieved 18 November 2017.old-form url
2. ^Münchhausen, Otto von (1770). 'Verzeichniß der Bäume und Stauden, welche in Deutschland fortkommen'. Der Hausvater. 5. Hannover: Försters und Sohns Erben. pp. 253: diagnosis in Latin, description in German in Teutonic script.
3. ^'Quercus marilandica (L.) Münchh'. World Checklist of Selected Plant Families (WCSP). Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 31 October 2017 – via The Plant List.
4. ^'Quercus marilandica Münchh'. Tropicos. Missouri Botanical Garden. Retrieved 31 October 2017.
5. ^'Quercus marilandica Range Map'(PDF). United States Geological Survey. Archived from the original(PDF) on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 2008-03-05.
6. ^'Quercus marilandica'. County-level distribution map from the North American Plant Atlas (NAPA). Biota of North America Program (BONAP). 2014. Retrieved 31 October 2017.
7. ^ ^abNixon, Kevin C. (1997). 'Quercus marilandica'. In Flora of North America Editorial Committee (ed.). Flora of North America North of Mexico (FNA). 3. New York and Oxford. Retrieved 31 October 2017 – via eFloras.org, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, MO & Harvard University Herbaria, Cambridge, MA.
8. ^Liming, Franklin G. (1 March 1942). 'Blackjack Oak in the Missouri Ozarks'. Journal of Forestry. Society of American Foresters. 40 (3): 249–252.
9. ^Klingaman, Gerald (September 22, 2000). 'Plant of the Week: Blackjack Oak'. Extension News. University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture. Retrieved 31 October 2017.
10. ^Nelson, John (12 January 2017). 'Blackjack oak grows in hardscrabble habitat'. Tallahassee Democrat. Tallahassee, Florida. Retrieved 31 October 2017.
11. ^Clark, F. Bryan; Liming, Franklin G. (December 1953), Sprouting of Blackjack Oak in the Missouri Ozarks, Technical Paper No. 137, Division of Forest Management, Central States Forest Experiment Station
12. ^'Blackjack Oak'. What Tree Is It?. Ohio Public Library Information Network and The Ohio Historical Society. 1997.
13. ^Oklahoma Biological Survey (2016). 'Ancient Cross Timbers'. University of Oklahoma. Retrieved 31 October 2017.
14. ^Oklahoma Forestry Services. 'Oklahoma's Forests > Oklahoma's Major Forest Types > Post Oak-Blackjack Forest'. Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry. Retrieved 31 October 2017.
15. ^Engle, David M. (18 March 1997). 'Oak ecology'. Stillwater, Oklahoma: Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, Oklahoma State University. Retrieved 31 October 2017.
16. ^Hogan, C. Michael (26 November 2012). 'Oak'. In Dawson, A.; Cleveland, C.J. (eds.). Encyclopedia of Earth. Washington DC: National Council for Science and the Environment. Archived from the original on May 23, 2013.
17. ^Shapiro, Leo (28 September 2012). 'Quercus marilandica – Blackjack Oak'. Encyclopedia of Life. Biodiversity Heritage Library. Retrieved 31 October 2017.
18. ^Hatch, Stephan L.; Pluhar, Jennifer, eds. (1999). Texas Range Plants. College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press. ISBN0-89096-538-2.

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