2025 Plant of the Year, Winner

Quercus montana provides benefits to wildlife for food, foraging, shelter, and nesting. Its large, sweet acorns are an important source of nutrition for animals of all sizes from black bears to turkeys to mice. A wide variety of birds find shelter and safe nesting habitat in the chestnut oak’s canopy and limbs. Even the leaves serve as a host plant for larval Duskywings and Hairstreaks, while the litter acts as cover for salamanders and insects.

Extremely adaptable and resilient, the chestnut oak will grow where many other oaks cannot survive. It lives on steep, rocky slopes and even thrives in poor, dry soils. Once overharvested to procure tannins for processing leather, this hardy tree regenerated by sprouting from stumps. The tough outer layer of the acorn helps retain moisture resulting in high germination rates.

In 2017 the Society of Municipal Arborists designated this tree as the Urban Tree of the Year because of its ability to thrive “in challenging conditions, even in the mean streets of cities.”

This chestnut oak’s widespread growing range, multi-faceted landscape uses, economic value, ease of propagation, and low maintenance requirements makes it an outstanding choice for a diverse range of locales. Although its natural home is the Appalachian Mountain range, the chestnut oak has the potential to grow successfully in over three-fourths of the USA. In ideal conditions, this handsome, long-lived shade tree may easily reach 100 feet tall and nearly as wide.