Quercus muehlenbergii Brookgreen Gardens is among the hardest in

is among the hardest in North America

Not the plant for a heavy crop

with a northern limit in southeastern North Carolina

buttressed trunk

Butterflies and hummingbirds work the orange flowers through the late season

Quercus muehlenbergii Brookgreen Gardens is among the hardest inThis oak carries the name of a Pennsylvania parson. Gotthilf Heinrich Ernst Muhlenberg was a Lutheran minister who botanized on the side, thoroughly enough that the German American botanist George Engelmann named the species for him, and then misspelled it: Engelmann set an umlaut over the u that Muhlenberg never used, and the rules of botanical naming have fossilized the slip ever since, transliterating it into the tongue twisting muehlenbergii we