Jack Maze (1937–2025)

We share the sad news that Jack Maze, a renowned Canadian botanist whose work included oak hybrids, died on February 26, 2025. Jack was a faculty member at the University of British Columbia for many years, and you can read his full obituary on the UBC website here. We note below some aspects of his work related to oaks.

Jack’s doctoral research focused on hybrids between Quercus macrocarpa (bur oak) and Q. gambelii (Gambel oak). As mentioned in Andrew Hipp’s recent book, Oak Origins, Jack, in collaboration with John Tucker of UC Davis, described a population of oaks from northeastern New Mexico that included individuals that looked like Q. macrocarpa, others that looked like Q. gambelii, and others that were somewhere in between. But the closest Q. macrocarpa population in New Mexico was about 400 km to the east. Maze also published descriptions of a similar population from the Black Hills of western South Dakota and adjacent Wyoming. He concluded that hybrids persisted as stable populations even after one of the parents had disappeared. As Andrew writes, “Both populations appeared to be remnants of Pleistocene migrations across the country, leaving morphological evidence of introgression thousands of years past the time when the two species might have grown together.”

The hybrid between these two species has been informally named in his honor, but unfortunately, the name has not yet been validly published. It was listed by Reinhold Lübbert in a catalog of oak names in 2001, as Quercus ×mazei, but the publication lacked a description, and there was no reference to a type specimen. Nevertheless, the name has been widely adopted. The IOS Taxonomy and Nomenclature Committee will work on valid publication of the name in the near future.

A cultivar named in Jack’s honor was published in 2019. This is a selection of the Q. gambelii × hybrid, introduced by IOS member Mark Krautmann of Heritage Seedlings and published as Q. ‘Jack Maze’ in International Oaks No. 30. It is a naturally single-trunk tree collected by the late Allan Taylor in Baca County, Colorado. It is distinguished by its deep and narrowly lobed leaves that turn a rich butter-yellow color in the autumn. It is currently available from Heritage Seedlings under the trade name TAYLORMADE^TM.

Aside from Jack's achievements as a scientist, many of which are detailed in the UBC obituary, he also wrote haikus. Allan Taylor published some of them in an article on the IOS website, each accompanying a photo of oaks taken by nature photographer Dan Brooks during a trip through the Black Hills of South Dakota in 2015. Dan wrote to us to let us know that Jack had died. He also shared some of his recent photos that Jack had written haikus for. Here is one:

Live Oak (Quercus virginiana) Ocracoke

bit by bit
a live oak dies—
buds not as strong as trunks

Further reading

Taylor, A., and T. Buchanan. 2009. An Interesting Hybrid Oak Population in Southeastern Colorado. International Oaks 20: 85–90 [link]

Buchanan, T. 2005. Past Hybridization Between Quercus macrocarpa and Quercus gambelii in Colorado. International Oaks 16: 7–26 [link]

Krautmann, M. 2019. Making Southwest U.S. Oak Cultivars Available. International Oaks 30: 225–232 [link]