Main problem, when pin oak is used where access beneath desired is low branching. If you cut off lowest branches next ones above droop down. Tree has to get fairly well along in life before this occurrence is no longer a problem.

And not a small-growing tree, 50' isn't even out of medium tree size range yet. Seattle has pin oaks over 100' tall.

bboy's point about downswept branching is true, but the tree choice is a good one for Cascadia if you want a big tree in that spot.

Dan

Good point...every year, my neighbor is cutting back her lower branches, as they span her driveway, having to cut back the ones above that have lowered down to where the branches below once were.

How about the seedling v. nursery plant issue? Any opinions or experiences I can draw from?

And has anyone seen one suffer from V. Wilt?

Your neighbors' cutting branches back yearly sounds more like tipping rather that limb removal as is what the other posters are talking about. It would take several years for the next lowest limbs to droop noticibly.

As the owner of a decades old pin oak, planted in the 1960's I can testify that the sagging of the branches is remarkably quick and bothersome.

Verticillium can also be assertive, this does have potential to be an important limitation on future planting.

No difference between nursery trees and seedlings, except seedlings you dig yourself, except such seedlings won't be grafted or rootbound.

Unless you decide to try a named cultivar, propagated by grafting.

Verticillium can be assertive in general, not on pin oaks specifically. I had a vine maple blight off after dumping and spreading "black dirt" nearby. It looked like verticillium to me, and occurred after the arrival of the then presumably infested organic material.

But I never had it confirmed by a lab. Other trees and shrubs have been grown in the same space for years since, without a repeating of the same syndrome.

Anyway, the pin oak is near this area and has likewise never done anything to make me think it had verticillium. It does get dead small interior branches, as do various other oaks planted in this area.

...various other oaks planted in this geographical area.

I am not an oak expert. Any chance of planting a similar oak but not a pin oak? Pin oaks obviously work in your neghbor's yard. Perhaps a red oak in yours?

Variety is the spice of life is all.

I've considered Red Oak (NRO, I believe). There are some at a nearby shopping center, but planted in a large grassy area, instead of the parking lot planting strips. They are more round in shape, as opposed to the Pin Oak's rather conical shape (I like both). They look very nice and healthy. I've just not seen a lot of them at the nurseries, so I wasn't sure if they grew well around here without a lot of maintenance. Seeing the Jack-and-the-bean-stalk growth of the Pin Oak across the street was what made me think of that one. Of course, the maintenance (trimming lower branches) on the Pin Oak is a consideration that I had forgotten about. The neighbor lady does both trimming back (tipping?) as well as cutting off lower branches. That tree grows like mad. I've seen her trim it a couple times in the same year.

Quercus rubra is very common in local plantings and makes a huge brontosaurean tree where successful, quite out of scale with a typical building lot. Younger specimens are often quite gaunt, in the manner of Ginkgo biloba. And the local autumn display is often lacking in brightness and appeal.

If you want to try an oak there are many other less usual ones that are more interesting. Perhaps the most colorful one seen locally producing lasting specimens (one stump I examined on a valley floor location in Auburn appeared to have something like 105 growth rings) is Q. alba. This is more lively than usual both in summer leaf and in fall.

Otherwise, where a nice branching structure was the main goal, with bright leaf color not being required I would plant either Q. frainetto or Q. lobata. The first has striking leaf shapes in addition to producing a tall, spreading, elevated crown in time.