Making an arboreal fashion statement: Skinny Genes Oak

By Jesse Batty

Who’s ever planted a Pacific Sunset Maple (Acer truncatum x A. platanoides ‘Warrenred’ P.P. No. 7433) or an Emerald Sunshine Elm (Ulmus propinqua ‘JFS Bieberich’)? Or better yet, eaten a Granny Smith apple (Malus ‘Granny Smith’) or a Red Delicious apple (Malus ‘Red Delicious’)?

If so, you’ve eaten the fruit of a cultivar! Cultivars are plants that have been bred for their special characteristics such as fall color, flowers, form, or in the case of the apples: taste. Cultivars are then able to be maintained by propagation and are often given a descriptive name to distinguish them from other plants.

Recently Keith Warren, J. Frank Schmidt & Son Co.’s director of product development, invited Friends of Trees to take part in the naming of a new introduction: Quercus robur x alba ‘JFS-KW2QX’. J. Frank Schmidt & Son Co., which has supported Friends of Trees for more than two decades, received Friends of Trees’ 2010 Business Leadership Award. The company’s communications director Nancy Buley, a Friends of Trees board member, received the Oregon Community Trees 2010 Professional Award last year for her longtime and effective advocacy on behalf of trees.

This new hybrid of English and White Oak displays an extremely narrow and fastigiate form, potentially the narrowest yet among oaks, with a mature height of 45 feet and a width of only 10 feet. So I, the amazing and hilarious (and tall!) Jesse Batty, came up with the name Skinny Genes!

From the Schmidt catalog: “Skinny jeans turn heads in the fashion world, and now there’s a tree destined to do the same for the plant world.” The Skinny Genes Oak is “a showstopper in the fields. Its tightly columnar form and very dark green and glossy summer foliage make an arboreal fashion statement.”

Many thanks to our friends at J. Frank Schmidt & Son Co. and to the new Skinny Genes Oak!

–Batty is a Neighborhood Trees Specialist for Friends of Trees.