Trees to 30 m tall, 1 m d.b.h, deciduous. Branchlets purple-brown, angular, glabrous, lenticellate. Leaf blade obovate to narrowly so, 7-20 cm long, (3)5-10 cm wide, hairy along veins, glabrescent, base narrowly rounded to auriculate, margin with 7-10 undulate to rough serrations on each side, apex truncate, shortly mucronate, or cuspidate; petiole 1-13 mm, glabrous. Female inflorescences axillary on apical part of young shoot, 0.5-2 cm; cupules 4 or 5 but usually only 1 or 2 fertile. Perianth 6-lobed. Fruits cupule cupular, 6-25mm long, 6-15 mm wide, enclosing 1/3 of nut; bracts basal from cupule rim triangular-ovate, abaxial surface semiglobose tuberculate; nuts narrowly ovoid, glabrous except for apex.ever.

Flowering Apr to May.
Fruting September to October
Distribution:  China, Korea, Russia.
Korea:  All provinces.  Forming pure stands on higher mountain slopes, dry bluffs and foothills; to ca. 1600 m in E Korea.

Quercus mongolica var. crispula (Blume) H. Ohashi in Japan is suspected as being the result of introgressive hybridization of Q. mongolica with Q. serrata.  Populations of  fairly narrow distribution and extreme variability occur often with Q. mongolica x Q. serrata in southern Korea (Jiri-san and Halla-san).  Q. mongolica var. crispula in Korea exhibits the leaf form of Q. mongolica var. mongolica, but the trichome characters of Q. serrata.  Although It is morphologically different from Q. mongolica var. crispula in Japan, Korean taxon is treated as a variety of Q. mongolica likewise in terms of hybridization between Q. mongolica and Q. serrata.