''Quercus humboldtii'', commonly known as the Andean oak, Colombian oak or roble, is a species of

oak An oak is a hardwood tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' of the beech family. They have spirally arranged leaves, often with lobed edges, and a nut called an acorn, borne within a cup. The genus is widely distributed in the Northern Hemisp ...

found only in

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

and

Panama Panama, officially the Republic of Panama, is a country in Latin America at the southern end of Central America, bordering South America. It is bordered by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north, and ...

. It is named for

Alexander von Humboldt Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, natural history, naturalist, List of explorers, explorer, and proponent of Romanticism, Romantic philosophy and Romanticism ...

Description

''Quercus humboldtii'' is an

evergreen In botany, an evergreen is a plant which has Leaf, foliage that remains green and functional throughout the year. This contrasts with deciduous plants, which lose their foliage completely during the winter or dry season. Consisting of many diffe ...

tree which grows to a height of and a diameter of , with buttresses of up to 1 m. Its

bark Bark may refer to: Common meanings * Bark (botany), an outer layer of a woody plant such as a tree or stick * Bark (sound), a vocalization of some animals (which is commonly the dog) Arts and entertainment * ''Bark'' (Jefferson Airplane album), ...

is reddish gray or gray and fissured, breaking into squares and flaking. The

leaves A leaf (: leaves) is a principal appendage of the stem of a vascular plant, usually borne laterally above ground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leaves, stem, ...

are simple, alternate and lanceolate, up to long, and clustered at the ends of the branches. The flowers are small, yellow, and unisexual, with a racemic inflorescence. Male flowers are numerous, with long-styled female flowers in a cupula. The fruit is a light brown, ovoid capsule, or

acorn The acorn is the nut (fruit), nut of the oaks and their close relatives (genera ''Quercus'', ''Notholithocarpus'' and ''Lithocarpus'', in the family Fagaceae). It usually contains a seedling surrounded by two cotyledons (seedling leaves), en ...

, with a leathery pericarp, in diameter and long, resting on a scaly cupule. Only one fruit per cupule is developed, and the inside of the acorn shell is woolly.

Distribution and habitat

It grows in the mountains with an elevational range from . It is found on all three Colombian

Andean The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long and wide (widest between 18°S ...

mountain ranges and some lowland inter-Andean regions,Muller, C. H. 1960. Flora of Panama, Part IV. Fascicle 2. Fagaceae. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 47(2): 95–104
/ref> and in the

Serranía del Darién The Serranía del Darién is a small mountain range on the border between Colombia and Panama in the area called the Darién Gap. It is located in the southeastern part of the Darién Province of Panama and the northwestern part of the Chocó ...

on the border between Panama and Colombia. The tree grows in the Andean highlands where the mean annual temperature is 16−24 °C, and the mean annual rainfall . It can be found in moderately fertile and deep soils as well as in degraded soils, preferring shallow soils with a thick layer of humus. The acorns provide important food for wildlife; two parrots – the rusty-faced parrot and Fuertes's parrot – are endemic to the threatened montane ecosystems of the Colombian Andes and are particularly dependent on the Andean oak forests as a home.

References

humboldtii Trees of Central America Trees of northern South America Flora of Colombia Flora of Panama Plants described in 1809 Taxa named by Aimé Bonpland Flora of the Andes Flora of the northwestern Andean montane forests {{Quercus-stub