I live on a river and I have cherrybark oaks and water oaks, but this is a new one. I "think" these are some kind of white oak from what my research indicates, rounded leaves. I have never had white oaks before and these are sprouting all over I guess from my squirrel population. The photos are from 3 different plants.

I can see bristles at the tips of the leaf lobes which would put them in the red oak group. Red oaks are notoriously difficult to identify by the leaves alone, especially as seedlings. At this point, it's impossible to say with any certainty which species they are. But, given that you said there are cherrybark oaks (a member of the red oak group) in the area, they are most likely cherrybark oak seedlings.

Kent how wonderful I am so delighted! I lost one of my two cherrybarks last year to straight line winds, I was heartbroken. Thanks so much.

I thought the rounded leaves indicated white oak, while red oaks always had pointy leaves? I feel like I'm about to learn something here!

Red oaks don't always have pointy leaves, but they do (almost) always show bristles at the tips of the lobes of their leaves. For example, Shingle Oaks and Blackjack Oaks are both in the red oak group, but they don't have particularly pointy leaves. If you look closely, you can see the bristles though (Shingle Oak leaves obviously don't have lobes, but do have bristles at the leaf tip)

Shingle Oak


Blackjack Oak


With seedlings, it gets much more complicated. Even the "pointy leaf" species of red oaks tend to have rounded leaves as seedlings. These are Northern Red Oak (Quercus rubra) seedlings:



A couple of years ago, we started working with a couple of researchers who were interested in studying the effects of some restoration work we recently started in a 3,000 acre oak forest near here. There are four species of oak (red, black, bur, and chinkapin) there, plus about 400 other species of plants. One of our most basic needs is to figure out which species of oak are regenerating (or not) and how it relates to our management activities (or not). They said that they could design a study to help get that answer, but they didn't know how to identify oaks to species as seedlings. My botanist friend said 'We can teach you that'. So, we took them out in the woods and, you know what, it WASN'T easy to tell the seedlings apart , even with just four species that are very distinct as adult plants. I walked by the patch of seedlings in the picture above and said 'There's some chinkapins'. One of the researchers said 'How can you tell?' so I got down on my knees and said 'See how the lobes are somewhat rounded and don't have any bristles'. Oops!

Kent...I'm glad you mentioned black jack as a possible as that was my first thought. They are short lived here, but coveted as the best wood for smokers.

Thank you, Kent. Have some acorns. Your post was so helpful. I will look for those bristles to help know I'm looking at a red oak group. I've learned so much from you!

@Kent we had a park ranger here one day checking sea wall permits and he went around my yard naming every tree I had. He's the only reason I know I had cherrybarks. He said the same thing when I pointed out a seedling that I wanted IDed, that it's difficult to tell on seedlings. I may post another photo of a different seedling tomorrow. Thanks so much for your good info!