I didn't have anyone behind me on my way home tonight, so I could slow down to look at the leaves on these oaks. They are all red oaks, regardless of color. However, there is one red oak in our back field that just turned brown this year despite every other oak within sight having turned glorious colors.

NHBabs(4b-5aNH), Thanks! Could you take pics of a couple of the white and red oaks on your property for comparison?

My parents have one oak. The Japanese beetles don't seem to bother it. I think they do bother the maples...or something does. It's survived in one of the worst spots, but lost a big limb last year. The basswood never lose limbs but their leaves get devoured...and on paper they shouldn't survive in that location. Go figure.

Ed, my oaks at home have lost their color completely by now, but I'll look through the photos I took this fall to see if I have any of my white oaks.

Not necessarily just interested in foliage...also curious about differences in bark and form.

Does no one on the coast have oaks or opinions?

Found this article about types of Oak on the Cape, might be interesting

http://capecod.wickedlocal.com/article/20141230/NEWS/141239532/?Start=1

They don't mention anything about salt spray, though

I think the winner here is the Red Oak without question. This is one of the most salt-tolerant oaks in that genus. You see tons of red oaks and scarlet oaks (which is in the Red Oak family) along South Shore coastal areas all the way to the Cape. White Oaks naturally occur in these areas too and will also tolerate salt to a certain degree but not like the Red Oaks.

Fall color in the Oak family is very hit or miss. There aren't any established cultivars for sale where you could be assured of the Fall color. So with that in mind, you really have to see the Fall color of an individual tree to see how good the foliage looks during that season. I can tell you that I've seen some Red Oaks in Plymouth and in Falmouth that had red foliage that would rival any maple. Most of the time though, you are going to have at best a dark but intense blood-red color. Often, these trees turn an orange-brown and then brown. Personally, I prefer Scarlet Oaks for Fall color. With them, you have a much better chance of getting an intense scarlet color in the Fall. White Oaks can turn a pleasant reddish-purple color in the Fall but they are usually at best a mix of yellow, orange, and brown and often just a plain brown.

Ed, I finally made it out with the camera to take some oak photos of form and bark. Here is bark and form for a fairly typical white oak (though it is two close growing stems, the two together look about like most of the white oaks around here.)

The white oak bark is somewhat platy looking.

Here are a couple of red oaks, which I think have a nicer overall tree shape. These happen to be in a cleared lawn now, but they grew in old pasture/logged woodland like the white oak shown above.

Sometimes the red oak bark has orangey streaks like these in the fissures, but sometimes it's just shades of gray.

These two photos each show a red oak on the left, and white oak on the right.

Saplings:

DBH of 15" or so.

I have a few willow oaks (Q. phellos) and they're really lovely trees. I especially appreciate that they're not all that common here on the Cape, and I love the small leaves. Not hardy elsewhere in NE, they do fine here. Sorry I can't address salt spray, but no problem with beetles or moths.

diggingthedirt: How do they handle wind? What is the Fall color like? Could you post pictures?

I'll have to do some research to see if they can handle the cold in my area...they'd be planted in southeast Mass, west of the Cape.

For the record, I ended up ordering 10 bare root white oak.