Quercus oleoides

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Quercus oleoides, photographed by Tereso Hernández Morales — fig. b Tereso Hernández Morales, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 32534285

Quercus oleoides, photographed by Juan Cruzado Cortés — fig. d Juan Cruzado Cortés, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 23372533

Quercus oleoides, photographed by Neptalí Ramírez Marcial — fig. f Neptalí Ramírez Marcial, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 1308179

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 9 botanical countries

Native distribution of Quercus oleoides, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Mexico Central	MXC	NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf	MXG
Mexico Northeast	MXE
Mexico Southeast	MXT
Mexico Southwest	MXS
Belize	BLZ	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Costa Rica	COS
Guatemala	GUA
Honduras	HON

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 242 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	11.7 °C	18.1 °C	22.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	26.9 °C	29.7 °C	34.2 °C
Annual rainfall	1,125 mm	1,678 mm	2,789 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	34 mm	132 mm	214 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 242 research-grade observations of Quercus oleoides that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 6 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Quercus lutescens M.Martens & Galeotti
Quercus oleoides f. lutescens (M.Martens & Galeotti) Trel.
Quercus oleoides var. australis Trel.
Quercus oleoides var. lutescens (M.Martens & Galeotti) A.Camus
Quercus oleoides var. typica A.Camus
Quercus retusa Liebm.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.