Quercus turbinella is a
shrub growing in height but sometimes becoming treelike and exceeding . The branches are gray or brown, the twigs often coated in short woolly fibers when young and becoming scaly with age. The thick, leathery evergreen
leaves are up to long by wide and are edged with large, spine-tipped teeth. They are gray-green to yellowish in color and waxy in texture on the upper surfaces, and yellowish and hairy or woolly and glandular on the lower surfaces. The males catkins are yellowish-green and the female flowers are in short spikes in the leaf axils, appearing at the same time as the new growth of leaves. The fruit is a yellowish brown
acorn up to two centimeters long with a shallow warty cup about a centimeter wide. This oak reproduces
sexually via its acorns if there is enough moisture present, but more often it reproduces
vegetatively by sprouting from its
rhizome and root crown. == Distribution ==