<p>Elucidating the underlying mechanisms driving the geographic and niche differentiation of forest tree species is amongst the key issues in studies of phytogeography as well as for determination of the climate-forest structure relationships. However, an explicit knowledge on the controls of the spatial displacement of congenic tree species by climatic factors is still lacking. Here we investigated changes in the radial growth of three deciduous oak species (<i>Quercus variabilis</i>,<i> Quercus aliena</i> var. <i>acuteserrata</i>, and <i>Quercus wutaishanica</i>) occurring sequentially along an altitudinal gradient on Mt. Taibai of the Qinling Mountains. We found that changes in moisture conditions with altitude, inferred by the standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration index (SPEI), dominated the influences on the radial growth of the three oak species. While an increase in temperature appeared to favor the radial growth in both <i>Q. aliena</i> var. <i>acuteserrata</i> and <i>Q. variabilis</i> across their altitudinal range, the association between rising temperature and drought (decreasing SPEI value) suppressed the radial growth of the high-altitude oak species <i>Q. wutaishanica</i>. Moreover, although three oak species exhibited comparable levels of drought resistance, the growth performance of <i>Q. aliena</i> var. <i>acuteserrata</i> and <i>Q. variabilis</i> demonstrated greater resilience, with more effective recovery from extreme drought compared to <i>Q. wutaishanica</i>. Our findings suggest that with projected future warming and more frequent and severe drought events, a range contraction would likely occur in <i>Q.wutaishanica</i> at its upper limit, whereas the distributional range of <i>Q. aliena</i> var. <i>acuteserrata</i> and <i>Q. variabilis</i> would possibly shift upwards or remain unchanged due to their higher plasticity to environmental changes.</p>