It is native to California (as far north as populations just south and east of the San Francisco Bay), Baja California, Southern Nevada, and in Arizona through the transition zone to the eastern Mogollon Rim, where it grows in canyons, mountain slopes, washes, and other dry habitats.

The upper surface is shiny, waxy, and olive green in color, the lower gray-green and coated with glandular hairs.

[4] Quercus palmeri usually grows in small populations, some of which are actually all clones of a single plant.

Palmer oak does not occur in New Mexico; the specimens were misidentified and later corrected to Quercus grisea, per SEINet.

[8] Quercus palmeri was recently discovered in southern Nevada in Christmas Tree Pass that was previously only known from fossils.