These often do come more or less true. However, the upright habit manifests early in life, with them actually, if anything becoming less columnar with age.

If you want a regular English Oak, get one from a nursery. Better yet, plant a native White Oak (Q. alba).

Yes, most acorns collected from columnar English Oaks do indeed turn out to produce offspring which is more or less columnar, but can vary in the degree of how narrow they are. Most American nurseries in fact are producing their "fastigiata" type English Oaks through acorn collecting from mature "fastigiata" types and not cuttings like they do more often in Europe with their "fastigiata" types. If you collected the acorns from an arboretum, then indeed it's very possible you could have some hybrids. These too also seem to be somewhat columnar, but with greater variability in just how narrow they grow. Some grow only moderately more narrow and upright than the pollen parent(the other Oak in the hybrid). Although I'd say the odds are high that those acorns will produce mostly upright narrowish growing Oaks.

Should've asked a month ago, I could easily have got some acorns from wild specimens ;-)

Pigeons and jays will have scoffed them all now.

Resin

As a follow up on this topic, I have another question regarding going from a "hybrid" back to a "natural state". I planted a hybrid brand name "Starburst" Honey Locust seedpod from my Father-In Law's tree 2 years ago. The parent tree came from a nursery about 35 years ago and this hybrid was appealing to potential buyers at the time because it was thornless and has especially vibrant yellow new growth foliage in the Spring. The offspring tree I planted is still very small but definately has tons of thorns! It has reverted back to be a plain old Honey Locust.Why do some trees revert back to the natural state but others retain the characteristics of the hybrid? I guess what I am asking is that if a hybrid English oak columnar tree retains the same shape when an acorn is planted, why would a Honey locust revert back to it's "thorny" natural state?

Ok, good question
First, you are referring to Gleditsia triacanthos f. inermis 'Sunburst', not a hybrid, just a cultivar of the thornless variety. inermis, or thornless, types come true from seed 50% of the time... it was luck of the draw. And the foliage is unlikely to be the yellowish characteristic of sunburst, just green. As a rule, most cultivars will not come true from seed. English oak itself an exception, not a rule.

Also, a Sunburst honeylocust is a male cultivar, so you would not be able to get seed from this tree (these trees are dioecious - the sexes are on separate trees.) I would guess your father-in-law's tree had a sucker grow from the rootstock and that's how you were able to get seed from the tree.)
Mike

treelover3- there trees are not dioecious, but bear their male and female flowers on separate branches, so an single sex tree can be selected from grafting a branch with the desired gender.

Actually Honey Locust is mostly dioecious with occasional perfect flowers forming on some trees. So the technical term is it's polygamo-dioecious.

Thanks all so much for the help!