Quercus parvula
species of plant
Quercus parvula, the Santa Cruz Island oak, is an evergreen red oak found on north-facing Santa Cruz Island slopes and in the California Coast Ranges from Santa Barbara County north to Mendocino County. It was taxonomically combined with Quercus wislizeni until resurrected as a separate species by Kevin Nixon in 1980. The type locality of Q. parvula var. shrevei (originally described by C.H. Muller as Q. shrevei) is Palo Colorado Canyon in Monterey County. It is placed in Quercus section Lobatae.
Three varieties of Q. parvula are currently recognized:
Q. parvula differs morphologically from its close relative Q. wislizeni in the following ways:
Leaf blades are larger, > (2)4 cm long rather than < 4(6) cm
Leaf blades are thinner, generally < 0.26 mm near the apex rather than usually > 0.26 mm
Current year twigs are 5-sided rather than ± roundish in cross section
Leaf petioles and current year twigs are glabrous to sparsely hairy rather than moderately to very hairy
Nut tips are blunt rather than more sharply pointed
Abaxial golden glandular uniseriate leaf blade trichomes are missing or sparse rather than moderate to dense
Abaxial multiradiate leaf blade trichomes are missing or sparse on the midvein rather than occasional to common
Secondary leaf blade veins are raised abaxially rather than ± not raised
Q. parvula and Q. wislizeni never produce newly emerging leaves with a velvety coating of red bulbous trichomes on the abaxial (upper) surface. This separates them from Q. kelloggii and both varieties of Q. agrifolia which produce such leaves.
Ecology
Mainland Q. parvula is commonly found with or near Sequoia sempervirens (coast redwood), and often near Q. agrifolia var. agrifolia (coast live oak) and Notholithocarpus densiflorus (tanoak).
Q. parvula differs ecologically from Q. wislizeni in the following ways:
Island or coastal habitat rather than Sierra foothills
Associates with Sequoia sempervirens rather than Pinus sabiniana
Hybridization
Quercus parvula is theoretically capable of hybridizing with all of the other California red oaks except the higher elevation southern California Quercus agrifolia var.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Quercus parvula” as species of plant. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of plant. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15339462. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Quercus parvula” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.