United States / Grow / overcup oak

overcup oak (Quercus lyrata)
Photo: (c) Emily Summerbell, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

overcup oak

Quercus lyrata · Fagaceae · all Quercus records · Wikipedia

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Is this one for your yard?

Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.

Quercus lyrata is on-list in this record's evidence. That sourced status leads the overcup oak profile and does not operate as a listing for other oak species.

Two hardiness assertions are retained in hardiness evidence, apart from the fire listing. The accepted fire pack is limited evidence, and the cited rows show its depth without using climate information to fill the gap.

This separation matters here: the two hardiness assertions describe their own climate evidence, while the on-list conclusion remains supported only by the fire rows selected for this individual record.

Form
tree
Mature height
~50 ft
Light
Full sun
Water need
high
Rated in
eastern US
On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Placement evidence
1 source placement record; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions
eastern US

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in AL, AR, DC, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, LA, MD, MO, MS, NC, NJ, OH, OK, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WV.
Native range
Current cited native range in AL, AR, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, LA, MD, MO, MS, NC, NJ, OK, SC, TN, TX, VA.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 4b; no upper limit is documented.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

How to read this page

The status above is computed from the cited rows below: independent recommendations can support a fire-resistant result, an avoid row can produce keep-away, and disagreement stays visible as conflict. Placement notes preserve each source’s own scheme rather than translating unlike rules into one scale. This is evidence about a plant, not permission to plant it in every part of the defensible space; Zone 0 remains noncombustible.

Native and introduced range evidence

These are exact U.S. botanical-area records from the cited range source. Native and introduced describe biogeographic relationship, not fire performance or planting approval. Doubtful and extinct rows stay visible but do not count as current presence.

Current native

19

exact source areas

Current introduced

0

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

19 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Alabama (AL)
  • Arkansas (AR)
  • Delaware (DE)
  • Florida (FL)
  • Georgia (GA)
  • Illinois (IL)
  • Indiana (IN)
  • Kentucky (KY)
  • Louisiana (LA)
  • Maryland (MD)
  • Missouri (MO)
  • Mississippi (MS)
  • North Carolina (NC)
  • New Jersey (NJ)
  • Oklahoma (OK)
  • South Carolina (SC)
  • Tennessee (TN)
  • Texas (TX)
  • Virginia (VA)

The lossless worldwide derivative is retained once in the research corpus; object pages repeat only exact U.S. areas needed by the local lens. The JSON twin carries the same page assertions.

Plant hardiness evidence

These values describe the plant source. Your ZIP zone comes from the separate 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Whole-zone values stay whole-zone, and a single unresolved value is not treated as a tolerance range. Different source boundaries stay separate: overlapping statements are compared independently, while only ranges with no shared zone are called a conflict.

Where its sources say to plant it

Placement rules below use each source's own distances or named zones, tied to its rating. They are not interchangeable with the directory's current Zone 0 guidance.

The evidence

Grouped by what each source concluded. Primary evidence rated the plant itself (a lab, field program, or original curation); corroboration compiled or republished another source's rating and resolves to its root lineage.

Recommends (1)

Last verified 2026-08-23. JSON (CC BY 4.0)

Profiles: USDA PLANTS · GBIF · iNaturalist · Wikidata · Wikipedia · ITIS

Quercus lyrata (Overcup oak). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/quercus-lyrata/. Last verified 2026-08-23.