This entire-leaved oak of east-central states is most common in open woods and thickets on somewhat base-rich soils. In Ky. it occurs mostly in localities that probably had thin woodland maintained by browsing or burning before modern agriculture. There are occasional hybrids with other species, including falcata, rubra, shumardii and velutina. Like falcata, imbricaria has small acorns with deep cups, and leaves with persistent pubescence on lower surfaces. In the central Bluegrass, Short (1828-9) noted: "The laurel oak, though a very common tree in some portions of Kentucky, especially in that section called "the barrens," is comparatively rare in this locality; nevertheless it does occur occasionally in company with the last [Q. muhlenbergii] on the richest lands..." Gm (1914) noted that it was "extremely common" in LOGA (a county of the barrens), where Juniperus virginiana was also unusually abundant. Q. imbricaria is still a frequent component of young woods in or near former "barrens" of the Pennyrhile Karst Plain. The national champion is at the western edge of the Bluegrass region on Ridgewood Road in JEFF: 153 cm dbh, 35 m tall, 38 m wide in 2019 (KDF 2020).