HIDDEN TREASURE
OF THE
JAPANESE GARDEN
Acorn photo
courtesy of Harum
Koh/Wikimedia
Commons;
tree photos by
Corinne Kennedy.
Quercus myrsinifolia
Bamboo-Leaf Oak
B y C o r i n n e K e n n e d y
Bamboo-leaf oak (Quercus myrsinifolia)
is one of my favorite trees in the Seattle
Japanese Garden. A uniquely beautiful
broadleaf evergreen that adapts well to our
region, it deserves to be more widely planted
in gardens here. I love its elegant, glossy-green
foliage, and its smooth, broad, horizontally
ribbed trunk, which looks just like the leg of an
elephant. It is clearly an oak species, but the
slender evergreen leaves clustered at the branch
tips give it a hint of bamboo.
Two specimens—planted here in the late
1960s and early 1970s and now over 40 feet
tall—stand next to each other in the Garden’s
densely planted and very shady northwest corner.
Although they’re near the path, they can easily be
missed by visitors failing to look upwards.
Quercus myrsinifolia is native to mixed
evergreen forests of central and southern Japan.
It is also found in Korea, southern China, Laos
and other parts of East Asia. Unlike the evergreen
oaks of the Mediterranean and the western U.S.,
it grows in areas of high summer rainfall.
Additional common names include Japanese
live oak and Chinese evergreen oak. In Japan, it
is known as shira kashi, which translates as “white
oak”—a reference to the color of the wood. The
species name, myrsinifolia, alludes to the genus
Myrsine, which includes glossy-leafed evergreen
trees and shrubs, some with foliage similarly
clustered at the branch tips.
In Japan, bamboo-leaf oaks are planted
at temples and shrines, also as shade trees in
parks and as tall hedges. Its size is often artfully
20 v Washington Park Arboretum Bulletin