''Quercus minima'', the dwarf live oak or minimal oak, is a North American species of shrubs in the

beech family The Fagaceae are a family of flowering plants that includes beeches, chestnuts and oaks, and comprises eight genera with about 927 species. Fagaceae in temperate regions are mostly deciduous, whereas in the tropics, many species occur as evergre ...

. It is native to the southeastern United States. ''Quercus minima'' is an

evergreen In botany, an evergreen is a plant which has foliage that remains green and functional through more than one growing season. This also pertains to plants that retain their foliage only in warm climates, and contrasts with deciduous plants, which ...

semi-evergreen Semi-deciduous or semi-evergreen is a botanical term which refers to plants that lose their foliage for a very short period, when old leaves fall off and new foliage growth is starting. This phenomenon occurs in tropical and sub-tropical woody spe ...

shrub rarely more than tall, reproducing by seed and also by means of underground rhizomes. It commonly forms extensive cloned colonies with many stems, many of them unbranched. The leaves are alternate, up to long, and toothless or with irregular teeth or lobes. The lobes, when present, are usually spine-tipped. The leaves are retained through the winter, dropping just before or as new growth resumes in late winter or early spring. ''Quercus minima'' is native to the coastal plain of the southeastern United States, primarily in Florida but extending from there to the

Carolinas The Carolinas are the U.S. states of North Carolina and South Carolina, considered collectively. They are bordered by Virginia to the north, Tennessee to the west, and Georgia to the southwest. The Atlantic Ocean is to the east. Combining Nort ...

and eastern

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a U.S. state, state in the Deep South and South Central United States, South Central regions of the United States. It is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 20th-smal ...

. There are reports of the species also growing in Texas, but these populations appear to belong to other taxa. Quercus minima 1

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q3827372

minima In mathematical analysis, the maxima and minima (the respective plurals of maximum and minimum) of a function, known collectively as extrema (the plural of extremum), are the largest and smallest value of the function, either within a given ...

Flora of the Southeastern United States Flora of Florida Plants described in 1860 Flora without expected TNC conservation status