Quercus suber (Cork Oak)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Quercus suber, photographed by Tony Rebelo — fig. a Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-04-30 / obs. 193089758

Quercus suber, photographed by Duarte Frade — fig. b Duarte Frade, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 188989062

Quercus suber, photographed by etrusko25 — fig. e etrusko25, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 175406080

Quercus suber, photographed by ARBA Tres Cantos — fig. g ARBA Tres Cantos, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 172969144

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 10 botanical countries

Native distribution of Quercus suber, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Corse	COR	EUROPE
France	FRA
Italy	ITA
Portugal	POR
Sardegna	SAR
Sicilia	SIC
Spain	SPA
Algeria	ALG	AFRICA
Morocco	MOR
Tunisia	TUN

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.

Flowering 40 in flower of 419 examined

13%

23%

32%

12%

Proportion of examined Quercus suber in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	2	34	6%	2% to 19%
Feb	3	23	13%	5% to 32%
Mar	2	30	7%	2% to 21%
Apr	9	39	23%	13% to 38%
May	12	38	32%	19% to 47%
Jun	1	16	6%	1% to 28%
Jul	0	34	0%	0% to 10%
Aug	2	42	5%	1% to 16%
Sep	0	54	0%	0% to 7%
Oct	4	51	8%	3% to 19%
Nov	1	25	4%	1% to 20%
Dec	4	33	12%	5% to 27%

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Quercus suber observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 40 of 419 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 49 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 cintrana Welw. ex Nyman
Quercus corticosa Raf.
Quercus mitis Banks ex Lowe
Quercus occidentalis J.Gay
Quercus occidentalis f. heterocarpa Globa-Mikhailenki
Quercus sardoa Gand.
Quercus suber f. biennalis Trab.
Quercus suber f. brevicupulata Trab.
Quercus suber f. brevicupulata (Batt. & Trab.) F.M.Vázquez
Quercus suber f. brevisquama (Cout.) Trab.
Quercus suber f. caduca Trab.
Quercus suber f. clavata (Cout.) F.M.Vázquez
Quercus suber f. dolichocarpa (A.Camus) F.M.Vázquez
Quercus suber f. dulcis Cout.
Quercus suber f. longicalyx (A.Camus) F.M.Vázquez
Quercus suber f. macrocarpa (Willk. & Lange) F.M.Vázquez
Quercus suber f. microcarpa (Batt. & Trab.) F.M.Vázquez
Quercus suber f. microphylla Cout.
Quercus suber f. oleifolia Cout.
Quercus suber f. pendula Cout.
Quercus suber f. racemosa (Borzí) F.M.Vázquez
Quercus suber f. subcritina (Cout.) Trab.
Quercus suber f. subintegrifolia Cout.
Quercus suber f. suboccultata (Cout.) F.M.Vázquez

and 25 more.

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.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.