Okay identifiers, what is it? Red Oak? You guessed right!


Unfortunately, that's as far as many of these found from Dallas to San Antonio (East Texas is different) will be identified on Inat. Why is that? Well, it's mainly because there are two separate species where there once was one, and still should be one, imo.
Before there was the species Q. buckleyi, it was listed as a variety of Q. shumardii, occurring along and to the west of the Balcones Escarpment.
Here is an old pdf when Q. shumardi spanned its full range - Q. shumardii var texana.pdf

However, Buckley's IS now listed as it's own species, so in this zone it is sometimes impossible to distinguish what is Shumard and what is Buckley, because the trees may appear in intermediate forms. That is to say the gene pool is mixed. Would love to have a magic dna checker for oaks.
Do not be fooled that Buckley's is always going to be a smaller tree- the Texas state champion Quercus buckleyi (found in Tarrant County) has a larger size index than the largest Quercus shumardii in Texas (found in Hayes County)- Texas Big Tree Registry
But typically, Buckley, aka Texas Oak, Texas Red Oak, and Spanish Oak, will be a multi-trunked gnarled tree found in dryer, rockier growing environments. The acorns will typically be smaller than Shumard, as will the leaves, but this will vary greatly from tree to tree. Often I will find trees near the top of a hill to be multi-trunked and smaller, while at the bottom in a valley with better conditions an acorn from the tree on the top will grow into a large single trunk tree that cannot be easily distinguished from shumardii. There are different hypothesis about how Buckley's (and other oaks) in this area have evolved into a tree that can occur in two different forms. I personally feel that the acorn contains elements of both and it depends in large part simply as to where that acorn falls as to what form you get.
So, anyway, since we do have the Buckley's species, the great majority of red oaks from Dallas to San Antone are going to be Buckley's.

But what about all of the planted Shumard's that Buckley's will mix with? Many of the Red Oak observations on Inat are of trees that have come up in someone's yard, or maybe sprouted in the woods from an acorn from a landscaped Shumard or Texas Red Oak, either of which may have been genetically modified or something different altogether. This further complicates things.
If however buckleyi was still classified as a variety of shumardii the great majority of these could be properly id'd to species as shumardii. But it's not. So with buckleyi as a separate species, many of these trees are stuck just being being Red Oaks.