A low-growing evergreen tree up to 30 ft high, with wide-spreading branches forming a flattened crown; young shoots soon becoming glabrous. Leaves hard and leathery, narrowly oblong, long and slenderly pointed, rounded to tapered at the base, conspicuously toothed, teeth incurved, 3 to 8 in. long, 1 to 3 in. wide, dark glossy green and glabrous above; glaucous and covered with close felt beneath; midrib yellowish beneath and, like the twelve to twenty pairs of veins, conspicuously raised on the undersurface. Fruits (which ripen in one year) not stalked but clustered on a spike 1 to 11⁄2 in. long near the end of the shoot; acorns are about 1⁄2 in. wide, the cup basin-shaped, concentrically ringed.
Q. oxyodon was described from a specimen collected in the Khasia Hills of Assam (N.E. India). It occurs also in the E. Himalaya, Upper Burma, and W. China and was introduced by Wilson in 1900 from W. Hupeh while collecting for Messrs Veitch. Coming from low altitudes it is unlikely to be hardy outside the milder counties, and the only example on record is at Caerhays, Cornwall. This measures 30 × 13⁄4 ft (1965).