NRO or Q. shumardii? It could be 15 or so years before those trees you planted start cracking and raising the sidewalk. At which time should have proven to be plenty of time to have raised the funding that could have been earmarked to use for removal and fix of any damage the tree's roots end up doing to the sidewalks. Still, I do not think the root expansion potential will be the primary concern over the years. Instead it is likely that it could end up being lingering problems with litter that a 15 year old oak will be dropping. I have not encountered litter problems with your region's NROs, but I do have two shumardii oaks planted in my front yard and with a neighborhood sidewalk running along just west of them. These trees had been planted high to help prevent root suffocation in our clay soil. The planting holes had been centered 6 feet just East of that sidewalk. These two shumardiis are plant about 50 feet apart, with our front walk that leads up to our front entry door, running evenly spaced up the center between each of them. They were first planted 25 year ago, in field grown B&B form, in the size of 4" trunks. They have never displayed any side walk raising or cracking damage. But there still are some big hassles with these trees. The worst of which is a yearly, large amount of litter. These two Shumard trees drop blankets of their long stingy pollen flowers in the spring, and that heavily litters the yard and sidewalks. But even worse is the massive amounts of acorns those shumards have been dropping for the last 15 or more years. Once the trees start dropping their, year before the last produced, acorns each year; then over many months the trees continue to drop acorn litter on the sidewalks. The sidewalks have to be swept daily during those months, and still people walking by encounter crunching acorns under their feet. In addition these acorns which fall in the yard and landscaping beds sprout almost as abundantly as is seen with many maple tree seeds. Evey year it is a chore to pull up all those new oak sprouts, plus it is difficult to keep the ones mowed down in the grass, since these little sprouts shoot up quicker than the grass grows in those early spring months. My point? It is my opion that your stressing, over if you should or should not have instead planted shumard oaks, is pointless. That is if you are just concerned about trying to avoid causing problems with your planting choice. True; Shumard tree root systems might do better in the 6 foot spacing, but that still does not make them the right tree to plant in the location you have described. Haven't convinced you yet? It has only been almost 2 years ago when 4 days of freezing rain fell and damaged most all the trees in our local area. Just over a half inch of ice accumulated on all the trees branches and even trunks. Many of the Pine trees along with other such tree's main leader trunks snapped off midway up the heights of the trees. Huge old maple and elm trees fell over, and were uprooted. The sugar maples' canopy branches broke off so much that the result made them look like a bad tree pruning job had topped them. What happened to my over 20 year old Shumards: Major limb breakage. After having the damaged and broken limbs pruned correctly away, for months later during most every windy spring storms more of the branches that had been weakened during the ice storm continues to break off. This happened even after we hired reputable tree pruners to remove any damaged limbs they found on the trees. Today both these trees still look very disfigured. Even so, My 10 year old shumard that I first planted in the back yard when it was still a spout off of one of my shumards in front, did not suffer any damage at all. This Shumard is planted where its roots can spread all it wants, and where it gets a better source of water runoff. I also am not bothered by excessive acorn drop with this tree. You might think that is because this tree is not as mature as its parent trees growing in the front yard. Yes, maybe that does contribute to why it seems to have been so much more resilient Still,a younger development age is not the only reason this 10 year old tree did better. Consider that I also have a 25 year old scarlet oak tree growing on the other side of my back yard. This tree is just as tall and spreads just as wide as the shumard oaks that were damaged so badly in the front yard. But this Scarlet oak tree, just like my 10 year old Shumardii has plenty of space to spread its fine feeder roots as far as it wants, and this Scarlet oak tree did not suffer any branch damage at all, by the ice storm I described above. Neither does it drop enough acorns to caused me hassles with too many sprouts growing in unwanted places. So if you seriously are wondering that you might have planted an otherwise good tree in the wrong place, then please stop wondering if, instead, you should have planted a Shumardii oak in the location you have described.

I ran out of oak seedlings, however I have some bicolor seedlings that may/may not be of size for this coming grafting season. I definitely have a branch I could spare on my Rough Rider but my Big John was nipped by rabbits to (1) bud both last year, and the year prior. I basically have (2) 6" branches. Guy may/may not have a specimen of Big John that he'll be able to collect scionwood from. Big John is located somewhere else away from his arboretum. 'Prince of Darkness' I'd have to get scionwood from him as-well. My plant was eaten by rabbits to (1) bud just like Big John and also two times. I was thankful to have had that single bud bring back my plant. And as of now I have no beech seedlings, but, I'm going to try and get just a few from a friend this month if he even has them... I have Birthday Candle and Chimney Fire so don't need wood. And Windcastle I don't need wood of either as I don't have a place for one. This New Madrid comes true from acorns probably 99% of the time. Guy gave me a seedling from the ortet so that's the only difference, whaas. F2 denoting it's a second generation seedling from the ortet/partent. Happy though to graft for you, anytime. I have no compatible seedlings for New Madrid right now unless I can find some local ones to dig up and pot. I'll keep my eyes peeled. Dax

It's hard to say - we were WET WET WET until mid July, then someone turned off the spigot. Aside from a nice 1" soaker two weekends ago, we've had NOTHING in appreciable rain since then. Crossing fingers that Karen gives us some rain as is currently likely. It seems to vary a lot here. Some Liquidambars are turning DEEP red on the outer leaves already (some purples too) and some are still green but the inner leaves are dropping and yellow. If some rain comes soon, I think colors will be good.

Dax, that December Red graft is looking GREAT! I wish I still had my graft. I have been too embarrassed to tell you but one random day in July of 2012 (nearly right after it was planted IIRC) I was out watering my trees and the December Red was GONE. Tag was still in the cage I had configured to keep critters out. I talked it over with Arktrees and abciximab (Patrick) from the conifer forum when it happened. Best we could tell a gopher pulled it straight down and ate it. I planted a white oak seedling in the same spot that fall and in spring/summer of 2013, the same exact thing happened; it flat out disappeared one day! Really weird. I would love to try it again if you have extras and pay you or buy some rootstocks for you or something. Broke my heart when I found out it was gone. I immediately suspected it was the neighbor's kids (it was located 20' from property line) but they are well behaved. I talked to their Dad about it and I am pretty sure it wasn't taken by them/someone else since it was so small. Come to think of it, this same thing happened all the way across my property to an acer barbatum seedling I planted. Maybe I am in a Bermuda Triangle of sorts!!!Very strange... Another plus to this selection, the leaves on mine emerged a very pretty red before turning green. This is a common trait with red family oaks but it was very noticeable on my specimen. John