well at least it is in the oak genus.... ;)

I'm always puzzled when I walk into a large nursery, how trees are just laying on the ground, some seeming like they've been that way for weeks.

Yep. Saw some at the K-Mart some years back... That were labeled Q.nigra, water oak - but were definitely Q.rubra. Was surprised that they had some pretty nice bur oak seedlings there at the same time...

Had a friend who bought a Santa Rosa plum at the bigbox store...thought something didn't exactly look plum about it... turned out to be one of the nonastringent Asian persimmons.

I've seen wrong picture cards on trees at big box stores also. Sometimes they have one kind of tree labeled as more then one variety and sometimes vice versa. You are not talking about the pinnacle of nursery industry care and quality at such retailers and their supply system.

Not to mention, the poor things are almost certainly almost irreparably rebound, they're never properly watered once they arrive on the lot, and two of them are lying down on the ground.

Plus, the stores usually have about five species of trees available, the same five species that are planted in every other single yard in the entire state. I like a little more variety.

The trees that they sell at big box stores are usually the most popular landscape trees and they basically provide what the consumer wants.

Also, young water oak trees do not have the same leaf shape as a mature tree will have. For the first several years a water oak will have varying leaf shapes.

The outdoor plant selection at big box stores here is too small and random to say that it consists of the most popular items or is otherwise that closely targeted to the market. One year they have some of these, the next some of those, and not a lot of any one item at one time. And just as at independent garden centers, in the current market woody ornamentals may sit for months before they disappear.