English oaks are they ??

[Stewart_Toowoomba]

I had to travel out west today for work and stumbled on some oak trees with acorns in fruit. There would be about 8-10 of these within 200 meters of each other. Form a web search, i think they may be the commone English oak but not too sure. The leaves look quite a bit smaller than the other oaks i see around toowoomba. there are planty of seedlings and young potential yamadori underneather them all I tried to get my hand in the photo for size reference.

I have a few questions for members

How much root ball should i endeavour to get when collecting the seedlings?
How hardy are these oaks in general?
I was considering collecting them, bare rooting and soaking in seasol for a few hours then planting into a 50:50 mix of diatomite and bonsai mix.

Any advice would be appreciated. Also would love to see any other oaks that members have on their tables and benches.

Cheers

Stew

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[coocarch]

If you're going to remove the seedlings, try get as much of the root ball as possible, but my favorite thing to do is to take the acorns and plant them, in a short year or two they can grow surprisingly fast. Good luck!
Coocarch

[AndrewM]

Look like English oak to me and they collect well

Grab as much root as practical, and then pot up. this time of your I would not bare root. Just pot up into your Mix and all should be good

Ken

[treeman]

Yes they're definately English oaks (long petiole holding the fruit)
Treat oaks like pines basiclly. that is: not repotting too often and go easy on the P.
I find they are difficult to get them to do what you want

[Stewart_Toowoomba]

Thanks very much for the replies everyone

Coocarch - i'm too impatient for that! I want to get my hands on them now.... If only i can arrange to have to go to work in that direction again

Thanks for the advice Ken and treeman - I'll do just that. I may be able to get a forest style going if i get a range of trees.

Do they bare root well at any other time of year? I can see myself getting quite a few of these and potting them up to give out to the members of my local bonsai club - or swap for something

If i collect a larger tree with a good girth (rather than a seedling of a few years old), do they take to a trunk chop and so back bud easily? Newbie oakman here

cheers

Stew

[TheNumber13]

A few weeks ago I collected 20+ self-sown oak seedlings (before our chickens moved in to dig them up). The tree looks similar to the one you listed, but I can't be sure it's exactly the same. I got them out with a couple handfuls worth of surrounding root/dirt where possible, however...;

On many of them, I was unable to avoid bare-rooting, and they came with only one or three noticeable roots. Only two have died (which I am sure were bare-rooted), the rest are powering on with noticeable new growth. I have thus far used no special treatments or care, and they went into a standard garden mix of dirt I use for most things. (please note, it has been quite wet and not very hot around here recently)

They responded well enough, so I grabbed about 20 more a couple of days ago.

So basically I guess this just confirms what has been said previously. If you haven't already (as it's been some time since this was posted), I would grab whatever seedlings you can with a decent little dirtball.