Quercus muehlenbergii Brookgreen Gardens buttressed trunk

buttressed trunk

lean sites where softer perennials struggle

with a northern limit in southeastern North Carolina

late seedling form long grown as a garden plant in its own right

Not the plant for a heavy crop

Quercus muehlenbergii Brookgreen Gardens buttressed trunkThis oak carries the name of a Pennsylvania parson. Gotthilf Heinrich Ernst Muhlenberg was a Lutheran minister who botanized on the side, thoroughly enough that the German American botanist George Engelmann named the species for him, and then misspelled it: Engelmann set an umlaut over the u that Muhlenberg never used, and the rules of botanical naming have fossilized the slip ever since, transliterating it into the tongue twisting muehlenbergii we