That sounds much better. Yes planting one 35 feet away from your neighbor's house is very generous and considerate. I would pick a different tree for planting only 13 feet from my deck, but I might simply be reacting to the last 12 or so years when my two Shumard trees have caused so much litter on the sidewalk, which runs along side them about 10 feet to the West of them. Of course a Shumard tree the size you are planting will not start causing such problems on your deck for a many years after planting. Lots of people would by then have sold the house, moved elsewhere, and let the then occupants deal with the litter problems. It will take about 15 or a few more years for the tree to do a good job shading your two story house, but it should only take a couple years for the tree to become well established and begin to fill out enough to begin offering some afternoon shadow type shading at least for the lower windows and patio. My Shumard Oaks, once established grew about 3 feet during each spring and fall growing seasons. They were planted B&B at the size of 4 inch diameter trunks. This was about 26 years ago, when I let the nursery man plant them for me only 25 feet from my house. They are now about 30 feet tall and would have developed lower branches, which have already been spreading into my house; that is, if we had not kept them pruned up during their pyramidal stages of growth. If I had it to do over again, due to the litter these trees create, I would choose a different type of tree to plant in front to shade my house and that close to my front sidewalks. The sad thing now is that they look terrible after suffering so much, 2007 or 8 (I forget which year's) spring, ice damage. In the back yard, my same age Scarlet oak tree did not loose any canopy structure from that almost 4 day period of freezing rain and drizzle. Now, it is about 40 feet tall and spreads about 26 feet across. An interesting point is that I planted this Scarlet tree from a one gallon black nursery pot. At that time the tree was only about 1 foot tall, and I planted it near the same time I planted those then, 4 inch trunked B & B; currently damaged Shumard oaks. I also have a 15 year old Shumard oak tree, which I first dug as sprout from an acorn under those first mentioned Shumard oaks. This young sprout has now grown to be an about 18 to 20 feet tall tree, and its canopy currently spreads only about 10-12 feet across. I have kept it pruned it to maintain a clean trunk in the lower 1/3rd of its main leader height. It is growing in the northeast side yard on my residential corner lot, and has amazed me at how much better it handled that icing event I mentioned above. Not a single branch broke off this shumard tree. Of course since it was produced by my Shumards, I do not know what other oaks cultivar genetics might have affected the production of this tree's originating acorn. The tree looks like a shumard by its growth pattern, bud, and leaf shape, but it still could be encountering ice damage resitance, benefits from the genetics of a different cultivar of oak cross pollinating with my shumard oaks that year.

i dont know if a 2.5 inch trunked tree.. has recovered from the transplant ... in two or three years ..... so if it is doing weird things.. i am not surprised ... you dont mention height.. nor ball and burlap or potted.. but if you think about a tree being twice as big underground.. as above.. you should appreciate how hard it is working underground.. to catch up to that above .. and it is making decisions??? ... lol... about where it is important to put the energy it makes.. and perhaps fall leaf color is not important to it ..... i know you are asking about culitvar comparisons... and i am taking a different tack ... but i think.. it is important.. for what that is worth .. lol ... how did the rest of your plantings work out ... ??? wasnt there some weird soil ph or something ...????? .. heavy clay .. a couple droughts.. etc ... all i seem to recall.. is that you struggled at first .... but seemed to be having fun doing it ... has it produced acorns yet??? ... other than maybe the first year ... sexual reproduction... threat aside [the planting process] .. may be an indicator of its overall health ... or 'establishment' .... i have about 8 different oaks... they are extremely variable as to fall color.. year to year .... this was not a very colorful year for mine ... two droughts in a row .... this year and last .... nut production was extreme last year.. barely any this year ... everything is variable on a tree... all i look for is that they produced leaves.. and lived .... on a tree that can live centuries.. this year.. and last year.. really dont mean much .... ken

Norma, I agree it might be sunscald on the tree trunk. Often, when you purchase containerized trees, they've been kept in a location where they have partial shade and then they suffer when abruptly transplanted into a situation where they are exposed to a lot of intense summer sunlight. Sometimes the containerized trees are grown in high tunnels with shade cloth that blocks some of the sunlight, and sometimes they are grown outdoors but in closely-spaced rows in containers placed pretty close to one another so that they help shade one another. Young bark that hasn't been exposed to intense sunlight and heat has a hard time adjusting to it. Some horticulturalists recommend wrapping the young tree trunks with a wrap made just for that purpose for the first year or two in order to protect the trunks, but others don't recommend that. Trees will suffer less problems after being transplanted if you plant them while they are dormant, which in our climate is roughly November through February depending on what part of OK you're in. That sort of planting gives them time to adjust to being transplanted and to make some good root growth before they also have to deal with increasingly hot temperatures and intense sunlight. With red oaks, there are various things that your tree's symptoms could indicate if it is not sunscald, but I'm inclined to think it is indeed sunscald. The sunburning of the bark can cause the splits in the wood and then you get the sap oozing out. The trunk damage then leads to the foliar problems because the tree's vacular system is affected by the damage. If you look at the spots where the sap is oozing out of the trunk, look closely to see if you see more or less straight splits in the trunk or if you see rows of holes. Sometimes borers will bore holes into young oak trees and then sap oozes out of those holes. With the withered, drying, dropping leaves, it could merely be transplant shock, but could have other causes---and not just sunscald, but something else----a pest, a disease, etc. If your soil drains poorly and you've had a great deal of rain this summer, that might be the issue. Red oaks like well-drained soil. I lived in Texas my entire life until moving here in 1999, and in Texas the red oaks have suffered for several decades now from a fungal disease called oak wilt. Once a tree is infected with it, saving the tree is almost impossible (and it is very costly to even attempt to save the tree). I haven't heard of oak wilt being a pernicious problem here in OK like it is in TX, but since the climate is about the same in these two states, I think it certainly is possible we do have oak wilt here in OK. We have transplanted at least a dozen Shumard Red Oaks up out of our low-lying woodland adjacent to a creek up to the higher ground where the house was built, and they all have grown well and are beautiful. However, we moved them while they were dormant and we moved them while they were tiny saplings. When we moved them, they were 8-18" tall and the rootballs we dug for them were about as deep as the saplings were tall. That is very important----when you buy a containerized tree, the roots within the container (and this is true whether you buy it in a 5-gallon, 25, gallon, 50 gallon, etc.) were not nearly as big as what a tree that size actually needs, so the trees will struggle anyhow to put out enough new roots to support the tree after it is transplanted. Expecting a tree to be able to tolerate being transplanted in the heat of June is a lot to ask of a tree that is starting out with more top growth than its roots can support even in the best of conditions. I hope the company from whom you purchased the trees has at least a 1-year guarantee and that they will replace the tree if it dies. I'm not saying your tree is dying---maybe it only has transplant shock and maybe it will recover and be fine, and the same is true if it is sunscald---it can recover. However, maybe the tree won't recover and, if that is the case, they ought to replace it. With trees, transplant shock can show up any time during the first year or so after the tree is transplanted, and transplant shock will not necessarily cause a tree to die. However, some trees are so weakened from a severe case of it that they never really do well and they die sometime during the next few years. I hope you'll keep us posted on what the company tells you and on what action they take. Dawn

I'd avoid the shumards from the big box stores - they're almost certainly southern provenance trees (likely from nursery growers in TN). I've tried southern source shumards more than once, and had very poor results (winter dieback, chlorotic foliage). You'd be much better off with a locally grown shumard from a more northern seed source (if you can find it). Maybe one of the growers in the Lake County area would have them? Though I've never tried Nuttall oak, based on its native range I'm guessing this species wouldn't perform any better than southern shumards. The Quercus experts may chime in on this. I also think at times some nursery growers have confused these 2 species, unknowingly labeling Nuttalls as Shumards.