# The Trees of Great Britain & Ireland/Volume 2/Common Oak

The Trees of Great Britain & Ireland was a multi-volume work, privately published between 1906 and 1913. The second volume was published 1907. The plates of this volume are part of the volume
COMMON OAK
The following is an account of the three species into which the Quercus Robur of Linnæus has been divided:—Quercus pedunculata, Quercus sessilifiora, and Quercus lanuginosa. Brief notes are given also of certain Mediterranean and Oriental forms which are in cultivation. The generic character will be given in another part, with our description of the exotic oaks in cultivation in these islands. Plates 78 and 79 show the twigs and buds of the pedunculate and sessile oaks, as well as those of some other species which will be described in a later volume, and the leaves of the three species now treated and of some of their varieties.
Those wishing to have the latest information on the oak from a physiological point of view are referred to the late Prof. Marshall Ward's work, which contains many details on points with which we do not propose to deal.
Loudon's account of the oak, covering over 100 closely printed pages, is also well worth study, especially with regard to the numerous historical trees, the quality of the timber, and the fungi, galls, and insects which live on or attack the tree.
QUERCUS PEDUNCULATA, Common or Stalked-Cupped Oak
    Quercus pedunculata, Ehrhart, Beiträge, v. 161 (1790); Loudon, Arb. et Frut. Brit. iii. 1731 (1838), Boswell Syme, Eng. Bot. viii. 145, tab. 1288 (1868).
    Quercus Robur, Linnæus, Sp. Pl. 996 (ex parte) (1753).
    Quercus Robur, L., sub-species pedunculata, DC. Prod. xvi. 2, p. 4 (1864).
    Quercus Robur, L., var. pedunculata, Hooker, Student's Flora of the British Isles, ed. 2, 364 (1878).
A large tree, attaining a height of over 100 feet and a girth of stem of 20 to 30 feet, with the main branches large, long, and irregularly bent.
Bark, when old, irregularly fissured, and gradually increasing to a thickness of two inches or more. Branchlets in winter stout, glabrous, angled, grey, with a five-angled pith and small semicircular leaf-scars, which are set obliquely on prominent leaf-cushions and show three irregular groups of leaf-traces. Buds brown, clustered at the ends of the twigs, and arranged alternately (in 2/5 order) lower on the twigs, arising at an acute angle; blunt-oval, five-angled, with numerous imbricated scales (in five rows), which are glabrous on the surface and ​shortly ciliate on the margin. The bud-scales are stipules, which fall off as soon as the leaves expand.
Leaves deciduous, sessile or with very short stalks, extremely variable in shape and size, but never symmetrical, generally with four to five pairs of entire, irregular, rounded lobes; obovate-oblong, diminishing in size to the base, which has always two small emarginate auricles; slightly silky pubescent when young, quite glabrous when adult; coriaceous in texture; dark green above, bluish green beneath. Some of the lateral nerves run to the sinuses between the lobes. The leaves from suckers which are very rare are usually entire or only slightly lobed, and are not auricled at the base. The fall of the leaves is very slow, often continuing for weeks, and frequently a part of the leaves remain on the tree till the close of winter.
Flowers appearing with the leaves; the male catkins being pendulous spikes (each bearing about a dozen flowers) arising from the preceding year's shoot and the lower part of the current year's shoot; the female inflorescences being long, obliquely erect spikes (each bearing one to five flowers at the upper end) arising in the axils of the two or three uppermost leaves. Male flower: calyx five- to seven-lobed, enclosing five to twelve stamens. Female flower: calyx six-partite, surrounded by a scaly cupule and enclosing an inferior ovary, surmounted by a cylindrical style terminating in a trifid stigma. Ovary three-celled, each cell containing two pendulous ovules.
Fruits: one to five, sessile on an elongated glabrous peduncle (1 to 6 inches long). Cup hemispheric, composed of many appressed, triangular, obtuse, glabrous or slightly tomentose imbricating scales. Acorn: variable in size and shape, flattened at the base where attached to the cup, and bearing the remains of the style at the apex, smooth and shining, containing one seed in one cell, five ovules and two cells being aborted and only visible as shrivelled remains at the base.
Seedling
The cotyledons remain enclosed in the coats of the acorn, and are not lifted above ground. The caulicle, stout and dark-coloured, gives off a long woody primary root. The plumule arises between the petioles of the two cotyledons, and develops into the young shoot, which at first bears only a few scattered scales, the first green leaf, small and obovate-oblong, coming afterwards; those succeeding are larger, obovate, and lobed. By the end of the first season the seedling has a long primary root with spreading lateral rootlets and a glabrous stem, averaging 6 to 8 inches high, bearing five or six sub-sessile glabrous leaves spirally arranged and ending in an ovoid glabrous bud. Each of these leaves has a minute stalk, with a pair of tiny linear stipules.
Varieties of Quercus pedunculata
1. Var. fastigiata, Spach, Hist. Vég. xi. 151 (1842), Fastigiate or Cypress Oak.
    Quercus fastigiata, Lamarck, Encyc. i. 725 (1783).
    Quercus pyramidalis, Gmelin, Fl. Bad. iii. 699 (1808).
    Quercus cupressoides, Hort.
The Cypress Oak has the branches pointing upwards, which gives the tree an irregular fastigiate shape; but in foliage and fruit it does not differ from the common oak. It has been found wild in the south-west of France, in the Landes and Pyrenees, in the provinces of Galicia and Navarre in Spain, and in Calabria. A famous tree of this variety stood in 1876 near the village of Haareshausen, close to Babenhausen in Hesse, which was supposed to be 280 years old, and it then measured 100 feet high and 10 feet in girth. It had been celebrated in Germany since the middle of the eighteenth century, and stood originally in the forest, now cleared away. From this tree nearly all the German trees, and possibly many English and French trees of this variety, have been derived. This variety comes true from seed to some extent; of thirty acorns sown at Nancy, twelve produced pyramidal oaks, the remainder reverting to the ordinary type. At White Knights, of several hundred acorns sown by the gardener, only five came true to the fastigiate type. Elwes has raised plants from seed which in youth at least are more or less fastigiate. The tree at White Knights is a remarkably good specimen, being 81 feet high and 8 feet in girth, and is beautifully symmetrical in shape. Sir Herbert Maxwell tells us that there are two trees at Dawick, Peeblesshire. Other fine specimens are at Knole Park, Kent, where Elwes measured one 66 feet by 5 feet; and at Hardwick, Suffolk, where he saw one 61 feet by 4 feet 10 inches. A very well shaped tree of this variety at Melbury Park (Plate 80) measures 65 feet by 3 feet 8 inches, and has the form of a well-grown Lombardy poplar. But none of these are equal to a tree growing at the Trianon at Versailles, which Elwes saw in 1905, and which measures about 90 feet by 10 feet. Several sub-varieties have appeared in various nurseries, and have received names, but as we have seen none of these in cultivation we do not think them worth recording.
Plate 80.
CYPRESS OAK AT MELBURY
3. Var. filicifolia, Lemaire, Illust. Hort. i. t. 32, verso (1854), Fern-leaved Oak, also known as asplenifolia, pectinata, pinnata, taraxacifolia, etc. The leaves are stalked and cuneate at the base, long and narrow in outline, deeply and irregularly pinnatifid. This was found wild in the mountains of southern Germany; and was sent out by Messrs. Booth and Sons, Hamburg.
4. Var. heterophylla, Loudon, Arb. et Frut. Brit. iii. 1732 (1844), Various-leaved Oak. This variety has leaves varying greatly in shape; some are lanceolate and entire, others are cut at the edges or deeply laciniate; but all are cuneate at the base. It has received a variety of names, as comptonæfolia, incisa, dissecta, laciniata, salicifolia, Fennessi, Fenzleyi, diversifolia, cucullata, etc. Loudon's figure represents a branch from an accidental seedling, raised in 1820 in the nursery of Messrs. Fennessey, Waterford. There is a free-growing tree of this variety at Smeaton-Hepburn, East Lothian, which measured in 1905, 56 feet by 4 feet 8 inches.
5. Var. hyemalis, Bechstein, Forstbot, 333 (1810). In this variety the fruit stalk is very long, at least as long as the leaf itself. This is also known as Quercus longipes, Steven, Bull. Soc. Nat. Mosc. i. 385 (1857).
6. Var. scolopendrifolia, Hort. This form has leaves with short stalks and cordate bases, somewhat variable in shape. Most of the leaves are long and narrow, with short lobes; but others more angular in form have swollen bladderlike projections on their upper surface. Certain sub-varieties are distinguished as bullata, cochleata, crispa, etc.; all having leaves variously deformed and presenting bladder- or blister-like projections on their surfaces.
7. Var. Concordia, Lemaire, Illust. Hort. xiv. t. 537 (1867). Leaves yellow, much more brightly coloured than in the variety commonly cultivated under the name aurea, the colour persisting during the summer. This beautiful form, the Golden Oak, originated in the nursery of Messrs. van Geert at Ghent in 1843. The late Mr. Charles Ellis wrote in 1894 to Kew that some golden oaks occur at Inglewood, Hungerford, Berkshire, as bright as the golden elder when seen in May. Mr. Clarke, gardener to H.J. Walmesley, Esq., the owner, informs me that the trees are now in vigorous health, and measure at 6 feet from the ground 45 feet by 6 feet 2 inches and 40 feet by 4 feet 9 inches respectively.
8. Var. purpurascens, A.DC., Flore Française, vi. 351 (1815), Purple Oak. —This was found wild near Le Mans by De Candolle; and another wild tree was subsequently found in Thuringia. The young leaves, petioles, and branchlets are purple, the colour fading away later in the season, This form ​has received many names, as var. purpurea, Loudon, and var. sanguinea, Spach. There are slight sub-varieties which are known as atropurpurea, atrosanguinea, nigra, nigricans, etc. The purple oak was first described by Bechstein (Forst. Bot. 333) in 1810 as Quercus sanguinea.
9. Var. variegata, Endlicher. Oaks with variegated leaves are not uncommon in the wild state. There is a specimen at Kew of a curious form sent by Mr. J. Lindsay Johnston from Eastlodge, Crondall, Hants, in 1882, The Rey. W. Wilks has sent leaves of an oak at Shirley, which were of a beautiful pink colour in November 1902. There are many forms of variegated oaks in catalogues; but it must be remembered that there is often a tendency in them to revert to the green form in a short space of time. Some of these sub-varieties may be distinguished as follows:—argenteo-marginata, margin of leaves white; argenteo-picta, leaves with white streaks; aureo-variegata, leaves with yellow streaks; rubrinervia, veins red in the young leaves; aureo-bicolor and tricolor, leaves variously coloured yellow, white, and green.
Elwes has seen a very fine variegated-leaved oak at Haldon near Exeter, the seat of J.F.G. Bannatyne, Esq, and I measured one 57 feet high and 7 feet in girth, at The Grove, Teddington, which, according to Loudon, was 37 feet high in 1837. This tree bears leaves, which come out variegated green, white, and pink, changing in autumn to a pure pink colour. The present owner, Charles E. Howard, Esq., informed me that it fruited only once to his knowledge, in 1887.
An account is given in the Gardeners' Chronicle of 14th September 1861 of a common oak which became variegated, the result of having been struck by lightning. This tree grew near Mawley, the seat of Sir Edward Blount, and contained about thirty feet of timber. It was struck by lightning on 26th June 1838, and did not appear to suffer at the time; but shortly afterwards the foliage, which was previously green, became beautifully variegated, and continued to produce variegated leaves and remained healthy.
10. Var. cuprea, Hort. This variety has bronze-coloured leaves when young, and is said to be a very distinct and vigorous form.
11. Var. tardissima, Simonkai, Le chêne de juin.—This variety has more regular branching and denser foliage than the common form; but is chiefly remarkable for the lateness of its leafing, which occurs five to eight weeks after the common oak. It was discovered in France in the valley of the Saône, from Pontailler to Saint-Amour; and has since been found at various places in the departments of Loir-et-Cher and Cher, and also in Hungary. It appears from experiments made at Nancy to come true from seed; and the delay in the putting forth of the leaf is as marked in seedlings as in old trees. It grows vigorously; and apparently, in spite of the short period each season that it ​carries foliage, it produces as much timber as the common form. The variety is considered of some importance in France, as owing to the lateness of leafing it is never affected by spring frosts; and it is recommended for cold, damp situations where the common oak is injured by this cause.
Many other varieties doubtless occur, both in cultivation and in the wild state. Specimens were sent to Kew from an old oak tree at Springfield, West Wickham, Kent, which bore extremely large leaves all over the tree, measuring as much as 8 inches long and 6 inches wide, and similar leaves occur on a tree at Colesborne. At Tortworth there is an oak about fifty years old, which bears fruit on very long peduncles, and has remarkably glossy coriaceous leaves somewhat variable in shape, but generally obovate-lanceolate, with quite entire or only slightly lobed margin. This is almost identical with a specimen at Kew, gathered near Arcachon in France by Mdme. de Vilmorin. Specimens collected in Wistman's Wood, Dartmoor, are also remarkable for their irregularly shaped and very slightly lobed leaves, which have a cuneate base.
The variation in the size and shape of the leaves in natural wild seedlings growing side by side is often remarkable. Elwes gathered from three trees growing on the rocks above Minard Castle, Lochfyne, leaves varying from about 2 to 8 inches long. Meehan narrates that when he settled in Germantown, near Philadelphia, he found a single Quercus Robur on the grounds of Mr. J. Hacker, from the acorns of which he raised hundreds of young seedlings, and has from these a second generation. He found amongst the seedlings numerous varieties, e.g. trees with leaves quite sessile, others with a petiole ¼ inch long, others with leaves as entire as those of Quercus Prinus, others with pinnatifid lobes; while in some cases the acorns were only a little longer than broad, in other cases cylindrical and twice as long as broad. Evidently here there was no possibility of hybridisation, as there was only one tree. This experiment of Meehan's, however, only goes to show the extreme variability of Q. pedunculata; and there is no evidence brought forward that any of the varieties became in the least like Q. sessiliflora.
In all the preceding varieties we are treading on safe ground, as there is no doubt that they are all derived from Q. pedunculata; but the case is different with certain forms from the Orient and southern Europe, which were considered by De Candolle to be varieties of Q. pedunculata, but by other authorities are treated as distinct species. A brief account of such of these as are in cultivation in England follows:—
Quercus Haas, Kotschy, Die Eiche. Eur. u. Or. t. 2 (1862); Q. Robur, pedunculata, var. Haas, DC. Prod.—This oak occurs in Cilicia and the Taurus, and in habit and size resembles the common oak; it differs in the following respects:— Young shoots white pubescent, puberulous when adult. Buds finely pubescent. Leaves on very short pubescent stalks, obovate, with cordate base, and four or five ​pairs of rounded lobes, the lateral nerves reaching to the sinuses as well as to the lobes; coriaceous; under surface bluish green, with a stellate pubescence, often discernible only with a lens. Fruit: 2 to 6 on a long stalk, very large, the acorns being $^4$⁄$_5$ inch in diameter. The cups look very distinct from those of the common oak.
This species is considered by Zabel to be a hybrid between Q. pedunculata and Q. lanuginosa, but it seems rather to be a geographical form of Quercus pedunculata, Elwes saw two stunted trees which may be this at Orton Hall, Peterborough, said to have been raised from acorns sent by the late Sir H. Layard from Kurdistan.
The following three species or geographical forms were considered to be varieties of Quercus pedunculata by De Candolle.
Quercus Brutia, Tenore, Sem. Ann. Hort. Neap. (1825), p. 12.—Occurs in southern Italy. The difference between it and some northern forms of Q. pedunculata is very slight, as the leaves are glabrous. The fruit is large and somewhat peculiar.
Quercus Thomasii, Tenore, loc. cit. This also occurs in southern Italy, and is a form with large acorns, having leaves pubescent on the under surface, and standing on short pubescent petioles.
Quercus apennina, Lamarck, Encyc. i. 725 (1783).—This is a small oak which occurs on dry situations in the south of France, and is said to form considerable forests in the Apennines in Italy. It has hoary, tomentose shoots and small leaves, with the under surface pale pubescent, and shorter stalks than Quercus lanuginosa, which it otherwise much resembles. The fruit is crowded on thick grey tomentose axes, and the cupules are greyish tomentose with appressed scales.
Hybrid or Intermediate Forms.—Hybrids between Quercus sessiliflora and Q. pedunculata occur; but they seem to be rare in the wild state in England, and I have only seen two or three specimens which could not at a glance be referred to one or other species without doubt. The best name for the hybrid is Quercus intermedia, Boenn, in Rchb. Fl. Germ. 177 (1830). The type specimen of Q. intermedia, Don, obtained by Leighton in Wyre Forest, Shropshire, is true sessiliflora. Another specimen in the British Museum labelled intermedia, gathered in 1843 in Surrey, is pedunculata; in this some of the peduncles are rather short, but there is one fully developed peduncle of the usual length, and the leaves in no way differ from ordinary pedunculata. What is often supposed to be intermedia is, however, the common oak, bearing leaves with stalks of a moderate length. The word pedunculata is apparently a trap to deceive all but the practised botanist. In Q. pedunculata the acorns are sessile on a long peduncle, which is distinct from a shoot, as it bears only acorns, never buds or leaves. I have received specimens from professional foresters, labelled "sessiliflora, intermediate form," in which the ​peduncle bearing the acorns overtopped the end of the shoot, and was mistaken for it, and the acorns in consequence were considered to be sessile on the shoot. I think that the alleged occurrence of numerous intermediate forms is due to an imperfect appreciation of the real distinctions between the two species; and specimens to support the common occurrence of hybridity are not as yet forthcoming. The first writer who tried to break down the distinctions between the two species in England—Greville—was not at all sure that he had succeeded; and in view of the important sylvicultural differences between the two trees the subject is one of more than academic interest.
Certain cultivated forms may be hybrids, as, e.g. Quercus falkenbergensis; and Q. armeniaca, Kotschy, from Armenia, is an undoubted hybrid. (A.H.)
The question of the distinctness of the sessile and pedunculate oaks in England has been discussed at great length on many occasions, but is one on which opinions, even among careful observers, always have differed, and differ still. Perhaps the best account of their peculiarities and merits is given by Loudon, pp. 1737–46, and in the Gardeners' Chronicle (1900), when a discussion was opened by Prof. Fisher, and continued by other well-known authorities.
Prof. Fisher describes the physiological difference, and maintains the opinion, which, largely based on French experience, is confirmed in some -parts of England, that the pedunculate oak is naturally adapted to a wet soil, while the sessile will thrive in comparatively dry situations, and says that these peculiarities are of great importance to planters in selecting seed. As nurserymen rarely distinguish them and are, as a rule, careless of the source from which their seed comes, provided it will produce good nursery plants, I should strongly advise all oak planters to select and grow their own oaks from the trees which thrive best on similar soil in their own district, or in places with similar soil and climate.
Mr. A.C. Forbes says that in many localities the sessile oak is quite rare, and in Wilts "probably the rarest indigenous tree that we have." He accounts for this by the fact quoted from a paper by Mr. J. Smith of Romsey, that at the time when oak timber was in demand for the navy, the durmast oak was not considered fit for that purpose, being, as it was said by the purveyors for the navy, more liable to dry rot, and this tradition still lurks in the minds of the older woodmen, tales being told of how they deceived those worthy gentlemen into passing the durmast oak for the dockyards.
There is a great deal of very interesting information in this paper both on the rate of growth and effects of transplanting of oaks, on their insect enemies and fungoid diseases, and a list is given, with many particulars and measurements of many of the most celebrated oaks of England. No one who is interested in oaks should fail to read it, but it is too long to quote from as freely as I should wish.
Sir Herbert Maxwell, in Gardeners' Chronicle, Nov. 10, 1900, says: "The long correspondence in your columns relative to the merits of the durmast or sessileflowered oak will probably leave most people of the same mind as they were when it ​began"; and goes on to say, "What is important is the fact that the durmast will thrive and ripen its season's growth in moist northern and western latitudes, which are unfavourable to the development of the pedunculate kind. In our salt-laden atmosphere upon the western seaboard much of the growth made by the pedunculate oak during one season fails to ripen before it is nipped by frost, and the tree is much more subject than the durmast to galls—a sure sign of debility; and it never carries with it the wealth of glossy foliage that never fails to distinguish the latter."
He then speaks of the fine oaks at Merevale Park, which are described on p. 318, as being of the sessile variety, and says that at Knole Park, Kent, on the other hand, the general growth is pedunculate; but there is a magnificent avenue of durmast oaks, leading to the house from the direction of the Wilderness, and these tower far and straight above the gnarled and twisted veterans in the rest of the park.
Another peculiarity of the sessile oak is referred to in a letter from the Hon. Gerald Lascelles to Mr. Stafford Howard, in which he says: 'I doubt whether there is much difference between the timber of the sessile and pedunculate oaks, but I think that the sessile is straighter and cleaner in growth, and one thing is certain— that it is almost immune from the attacks of the caterpillar (Tortrix viridana) which so often destroys every leaf on the pedunculate oak in early summer. Whether this does any real harm or not is a moot point, but I think it must be a check to growth, and that the trees would be better without it. I have seen a sessile oak standing out in brilliant foliage when every tree in the wood around was as bare of leaf as in winter."
Mr. J. Smith, in the paper above referred to, pp. 29–30, confirms Mr. Lascelles' observations, and says that in 1888, which was the worst year for these caterpillars that he remembered, he passed through a wood composed of Q. sessiliflora in which, though it had been attacked by the caterpillars, they had left off, evidently either poisoned or starved. He also quotes a resident in the Forest of Dean who, writing in 1881, says: 'It was strikingly evident last summer that the Q. Robur pedunculata, or old English oak, was attacked by blight (? caterpillars) more severely than Q. R. sessiliflora"; and Mr. Baylis, who now has charge of Dean Forest, writes to me on the subject as follows:—"I can confirm the statement that the larva of the green oak moth defoliates Q. pedunculata, very much more than Q. sessiliflora, and I think the reason is this: the latter is the first to come into leaf, and the leaf has time to get fairly tough before the caterpillar has reached its most destructive stage, which is about the time that Q. pedunculata is coming into leaf. I have very frequently noticed this fact that the oak with more decided pedunculate characters is almost invariably attacked rather than the other."
The only published exact observation that I know of with regard to the relative rate of growth of the two forms on the same soil is by Mr. H. Clinton Baker of Bayfordbury. Near his house are growing on sandy loam, close to each other, a pedunculate oak raised in 1811 from the celebrated tree at Panshanger, and a sessile ​oak raised in 1840 from a tree at Woburn Abbey. Measurements show that the former was 6 ft. 7 in. in girth in 1865, and is now 9g ft. 4 in.; whilst the latter, only 1 ft. 8 in. in 1865, is now 8 ft. 7 in. Mr. J. Hopkinson in Trans. Hertfordshire Nat. Hist. Soc. xii. pp. 249, 250, gives diagrams showing the comparative annual increase during two periods of these trees. I may add that the habit of the two trees differs but little, and the soil is more suitable to the sessile oak.
Mr. Sharpe, forester at Monreith, where Sir Herbert Maxwell planted in 1898 a quantity of oaks of the two species, on a fairly deep loam soil, measured ten of each sort in 1905, and informs us that the sessile oak averaged 134 feet in height, and the pedunculate oak only 10½ feet. (H.J.E.)
QUERCUS SESSILIFLORA, Sessile or Durmast Oak
    Quercus sessiliflora, Salisbury, Prod. Stirp. Hort. Chap. Allerton, 392 (1796); Loudon, Arb. et Frut. Brit. iii. 1736 (1838); Boswell Syme, Eng. Bot. viii. 157, tab. 1289 (1868).
    Quercus sessilis, Ehrhart, Beiträge, v. 161 (1790).
    Quercus Robur, Miller, Gard. Dict., vii. t (1759).
    Quercus Robur, Linnæus, var. β; Mantissa, 496 (1771).
    Quercus Robur, L., sub-species sessiliflora, DC. Prod. xvi. 2, p. 6 (1864).
    Quercus Robur, L., var. sessiliflora, Hooker, Stud. Flora Brit. Isles, ed. 2, 364 (1878).
A tree resembling Q. pedunculata, but with more regular branching, resulting in a denser crown of foliage. It differs somewhat in the characters of the branchlets, buds, leaves, pistillate flowers, and fruit, as follows:—
Branchlets pubescent, especially near the top. Buds more sharply pointed, with scales pubescent on the outer surface, especially near the apex, and having long marginal cilia.
Leaves with a long petiole; symmetrical, obovate-oblong, widest at the middle and gradually diminishing to the base, which is cuneate and generally without auricles; firm, almost coriaceous in texture; sinuately lobed or pinnatipartite, the lobes being oblong or triangular, entire, occasionally apiculate; upper surface glabrous and shining, dark green; lower surface brighter even glaucous green and always more or less pubescent. Lateral nerves running to the sinuses are very seldom present. Pistillate flowers with stigmas almost sessile. Fruit solitary or crowded, inserted on the branchlets, or borne sessile on an erect, stout, short pubescent peduncle. Cups pubescent, with scales more numerous and more closely crowded together than in Q. pedunculata.
This species is quite distinct from Q. pedunculata, and the characters given above are very constant. The pubescence, which is visible in this species throughout, on the top of the twigs, buds, stalks, peduncles, cups, and under surface of the leaves, is not so pronounced in specimens occurring in rainy districts; but it can always be made out by a lens. The physiological differences are well marked. The sessile ​oak comes into flower and leaf later by some days than the other species, and it is less liable to attacks of the roller moth. It bears shade better, and on this account can be grown closer as a forest tree. It grows naturally on drier soils, and on the Continent ascends to higher altitudes than Quercus pedunculata. It is different in habit, the terminal bud being stronger than the others, so that the shoot is continued in the same direction, and the branches keep straight; whereas in Q. pedunculata the lateral buds at the apex often develop more vigorously and a crooked branch results, with the leaves much more tufted.
Seedling
At first the seedling differs little from that of Q. pedunculata, though the young leaves are more distinctly stalked; but towards the end of the first year, the characters shown in the adult stage are well marked, namely -—the stem, leaves, and terminal bud are pubescent, and the leaves have a cuneate base and short but distinct stalks.
Varieties of Quercus sessiliflora
1. Var. longifolia, Dippel, Laubh. ii. 67 (1892).—This is also known as macrophylla. The leaves are variable, but are as a rule very long, as much as eight inches, and narrow in proportion to their length, the lobing being never constant. The base of the leaf is always cuneate.
2. Var. laciniata, Koehne, Dendrol. 130 (1893).— Leaves small with deeply-cut segments, which are directed forwards; base cuneate.
3. Var. mespilifolia, Wallroth, Sched. Crit. 494 (1822).—Leaves, with a petiole of one inch, lanceolate, long, and narrowed at both ends, averaging five inches long by one inch broad at the widest part; quite entire in margin or very slightly lobed. This form has been found wild at Nordhausen in the Harz mountains, at Wolgast in Pomerania, and in various places in Austria and Hungary. Var. Louetti, is a somewhat pendulous sub-variety, which is considered by most authors to be identical with var. mespilifolia.
4. Var. sublobata, Koch, Dendrol. ii. 2, 32 (1873). Quercus sublobata, Kitaibel, in Schult. Oest. Fl. i. 619 (1814).—This is nearly the same as the last variety, but the leaves are slightly and regularly lobed. It came into commerce from the Royal nursery at Geltow near Potsdam, and hence is often known as var. geltoviana.
5. Var. cochleata, Petzold et Kirchner, 47. Arb. Musc. 630 (1864).—This resembles the common form, except that the edges of the leaf are curved upwards, so that the centre of it is rendered concave. It is said to be a free-growing variety.
6. Var. afghanistanensis, Hort.—This variety, as cultivated at Kew, has obovate leaves very similar to the common form, except that the lobes of the leaf are more shallow and more numerous, and its bluish under surface is covered with a fine pubescence which extends to the petioles. It is considered by Zabel to be a hybrid between Q. lanuginosa and Q. sessiliflora. It was sent out by Messrs. Booth of ​Hamburg, who stated in their catalogue that it came from Afghanistan; but Petzold and Kirchner, loc. cit., consider this origin to be improbable. What is sold under this name in some nurseries is sessiliflora or Mirbeckii.
7. Var. iberica, Hort.—This variety, as cultivated at Kew, has small oblongovate leaves, broad and cordate at the base, acute at the apex, with numerous small deltoid lobes, each terminating in a callous acute tip, the margins of the lobes being often turned downwards and inwards.
8. Var. falkenbergensis, Hort.—This has small dark-green leaves, broadest in diameter in their upper third, lobes few and broad, and the base generally cordate and auricled. The fruit is sessile or on short peduncles. It is very probably a hybrid between Quercus pedunculata and Q. sessiliflora. This variety was found in 1832 in a wood at Falkenberg in Hanover, and was put into commerce by Messrs. T. Booth and Sons in 1837.
9. Var. alnoides, Hort.—This variety, as cultivated at Kew, has small leaves, not exceeding 2 inches in length, with about eight pairs of small lobes, the apex of the leaf being generally acute, the base cordate or cuneate.
10. Var. pinnata, Hort.—Leaves deeply pinnate, the sinuses extending almost to the midrib.
11. Var. rubicunda, Hort.—Leaves deep red, more especially in the early part of summer.
12, Var. purpurea, Hort.—Leaves purple, becoming green with reddish nerves in early autumn. This variety, according to Mr. Nicholson, is a thoroughly distinct and valuable ornamental tree.
13. Var. variegata, Hort.—Leaves variegated either with white or yellow tints.
14. Var. aurea, DC. Prod. xvi. 2, p. 9 (1864). Quercus aurea, Kitaibel, in Reichb. Icon. xii. 8, t. 645 (1850).—The leaf has generally six pairs of deeply cut lobes, rounded at the top. The young shoots bear yellowish leaves, and are themselves deep yellow. This occurs wild in Austria, and is considered by Zabel to be a hybrid between Q. conferta and Q. lanuginosa; but a type specimen at Kew does not show evidence of Q. conferta parentage.
15. Var. dschorochensis, Hort.—The variety which is cultivated under this name does not seem to be the species found by Koch on the Dschoroch range of mountains near Trebizond in Asia Minor; and at Kew is apparently a form of sessiliflora with oblong-oval leaves, which have eight or nine pairs of very shallow sinuate lobes.
QUERCUS LANUGINOSA, Pubescent Oak
    Quercus lanuginosa, Thuillier, Flora Envir. Paris, ed. 2, 502 (1799).
    Quercus pubescens, Willd. Sp. Pl. iv. 450 (1805).
    Quercus Robur sessiliflora, var. lanuginosa, DC. Prod. xvi. 2, p. 10 (1864).
    Quercus sessiliflora, Salisbury, var. pubescens, Loudon, Arb. et Frut. Brit. ii. 1736 (1838).
A small tree, rarely attaining 60 feet in height, and often, in the wild state, a dense shrub with a twisted stem. Bark rather rougher and more scaly than that of the common oak. Twigs and buds densely pubescent, the scales of the latter being ciliate on the margin and pubescent all over their surface. Leaves small, about 3 inches long, variable in shape, wrinkled in margin, cuneate or cordate at the base, with four to eight pairs of rounded lobes variable in depth; always densely pubescent underneath; petiole tomentose, ½ to 1 inch long. Axis of male flowers pubescent. Female flowers with sessile stigmas and tomentose ovary. Fruits, one to four, crowded on a short thick stalk, or sessile; cups tomentose and often tubercular.
This oak occurs on dry soils, especially those of limestone formation, in the south of France, Corsica, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Alsace, south Baden, Thuringia, Austria, Hungary, southern and western Switzerland, Turkey, Greece, Crimea, Caucasus, and Asia Minor. In Provence it forms dense, low thickets covering extensive areas of the very dry lower parts of the limestone mountains. In Corsica it appears to be the only deciduous species of oak; and was seen by me forming scattered groves in the mountains below the zone of Pinus Laricio, at about 2000 feet elevation. I observed no trees larger than a foot in diameter; and it is evident that it is very distinct from Q. sessiliflora, which, if it occurred, would grow to a large size in the Corsican humid climate. The tree is of no importance in Corsica as a source of timber; and Mr. Rotgès of the forest service considered that it should always be treated as coppice.
It produces hybrids with both Q. sessiliflora and Q. pedunculata, and differs markedly from both these species in its habit of producing root-suckers, and moreover the bark is different.
Loudon incorrectly states that it occurs in the New Forest, and Sussex. There is a tree of this form growing at Syon with a remarkably curved bole of about 18 feet long and 5 feet 10 inches in girth. If upright this tree might have been 50 feet high. Elwes has seen this species growing wild in the forest of Fontainebleau, which Hickel informed him was about its northern limit as a wild tree; here it is usually small and stunted, so far as he saw, and of no economic value.
Varieties of Quercus lanuginosa
1. Var. Hartwissiana, Hort. Leaves with six or seven pairs of lobes, which are mucronate at the tips.
​2. Var. dissecta, Hort. Leaves deeply cut.
3. Var. Dalechampii, Koch, Dendrol. ii. 2, p. 38 (1873); Quercus Dalechampii, Tenore, Ind. Sem. Hort. Neap. 1850, p. 15; Quercus sessiliflora, var. Tenorei, DC. Prod. xvi. 2, p. 7 (1864).
This form, which is considered by some to be a distinct species, occurs in southern Italy. It is in cultivation at Kew, and has leaves 3 to 4 inches long on short stalks. The leaves are oblong-oval, with bases cuneate or truncate, often auricled, coriaceous in texture, shining green above, bluish and only slightly pubescent beneath, with six to eight pairs of acute shallow lobes, which have their
margins curved inwards and backwards. The bark of the tree is very rough and scaly.
Distribution of the Common Oak
Owing to the general opinion of English botanists that there is only one indigenous species of oak, with two inconstant varieties, there are few accurate records of the distribution of the two species, and in the majority of cases it is impossible to say whether the specimens in our great herbaria are from wild or cultivated trees. Moreover, owing to the great changes caused by the spread of cultivation and the cutting down of most of the original woodland, the correct distribution of the two species can scarcely be made out. It is probable, however, that in ancient times the pedunculate oak occupied the alluvial lands and the better soils, now almost entirely devoted to agriculture and pasture. Hedgerow trees are invariably of this species. The sessile oak occupied the hilly land and the poorer soils; and in existing oak-woods occurring in such situations, which have never been touched by the plough, it is always the species met with, as in the Wyre Forest, the Forest of Dean, in the district about Burnham Beeches, in Lord Cowper's woods near Welwyn, Herts, which are on high-lying poor gravel soil, etc. In Scotland, judging from a specimen at Kew, the famous Birnam wood consisted of Quercus sessiliflora. In Ireland, the ancient wood of Shillelagh, in Wicklow, of which a remnant still exists, was the same species. The Cratloe wood near Limerick is of pure sessile oak; and it is the only species in the wilder parts of Kerry. All the specimens of Q. pedunculata which I have received from Ireland, are from planted trees.
In England the oak ascends to 1200 feet in Yorkshire. In an interesting paper by H.B. Watt on the "Altitude of Forest Trees in the Cairngorm Mountains" in Scotland, 700 to 800 feet is given as the highest level at which the oak was observed; but Mr. Watt says, in a MS. note, that he found in July 1903 a small oak at Corriemulzie at an elevation of 1200 feet. The same author gives many interesting particulars of the oak in Scotland, in a paper published in the Annals of the Andersonian Naturalists' Society, ii. 89 (1900). In Ireland the oak ascends in Derry to 1480 feet. There are remains of virgin forest in Donegal, on Sir Arthur Wallace's property near Lough Esk; and a very large oak wood, which is of great antiquity, occurs at Clonbrock, the seat of Lord Clonbrock, in Co. Galway, on the limestone formation. There are smaller woods in many of the mountain glens, and Mr. Welch of Belfast says that where these primitive bits of forest have never been touched by tillage, peculiar and local forms of land-shells occur, and the Clonbrock oak forest contains rare plants, moths, etc., unknown elsewhere. The oak was in early times much more widely spread; it has been found, e.g., in a peat moss in the Orkneys. Mr. T.T. Armistead found a young oak growing in a sheltered ravine on the coast ​of Hoy, Orkney, and the acorn from which it sprang must have been brought from the mainland by a rock-dove or rook.
Remains of oak are found in all the later geological deposits; in the pre-glacial deposits in the Cromer forest-bed; in inter-glacial deposits in Hampshire, Sussex, Hertford, Middlesex, and Suffolk; in neolithic deposits; common in "submerged forests" everywhere; at the base of peat-mosses in many localities (ascending in them up to 1000 feet in Yorkshire). Mr. S.B.J. Skertchley describes the growth of five successive oak forests in the valley of the Ouse, and considers the oldest of them to be some 70,000 years old. These forests spread downwards towards the fen till checked by water and peat moss, the latter eventually burying and preserving them. The trees in thousands lie to the north-east, having been blown down by the south-west, which is still the prevailing wind. The word oak occurs in place-names both of Celtic and Saxon origin, the Saxon forms in names being ac, oak, wok, and auch. These forms are illustrated by names like Auchley, Auckland, Acworth, Wokingham, Oakingham, Oakham, Oakfield, Oakley, Martock, Holyoak, and Sellyoak. The Gaelic name is dair, as in Derry, Edenderry, Ballinderry, Kildare, Adare, Darnock, Kildarragh, Auchindarroch, Craigandarroch.
Quercus pedunculata, according to Willkomm, occurs throughout the greater part of Europe, Asia Minor, and the Caucasus. Its northern limit reaches, on the west coast of Norway, 62° 55', on the eastern side of Norway 60° 45', in Sweden 60°, in Finland 61° 30' at Björneborg and 60° at Helsingfors, then passes along the coast of Esthonia to St. Petersburg, and crosses Russia south of Jaroslav and Perm, then descends southwards, reaching the Ural river between Orenberg and Orsk, and descends along that river to Iletzkoi. Its distribution in the Caucasus and Asia Minor is not known with exactness, owing to the conflicting opinions about the oaks of these regions. In Europe it occurs as far south as Greece, Sicily, and in the Peninsula reaches its southern limit in the Sierra Morena range. The western limit, beginning at the western part of this range, includes the northern part of Portugal and Galicia, and continues up along the coast of France, ending in Ireland and Scotland. It is essentially a tree of the plains and low hills, but it ascends in Southern Scandinavia to 993 feet, in the Berne Oberland to 2530 feet, in the Tirol to 3160 feet, in the Jura to 2216 feet, and in the Pyrenees to 3300 feet.
It is, according to Max von Sivers, a much scarcer tree than it formerly was in the Baltic Provinces of Russia, and only exists in pure forests of any extent in Kurland, where it attains in river valleys and loamy soil very large dimensions, as much as 9 metres (about 30 feet) in girth, Some of the best trees produce logs free from branches over 60 feet long and 5 feet in girth at the top. He attributes its comparative scarcity at present to over-felling during the last two centuries, but states that replanting has been recently carried on to some extent. Quercus sessiliflora occupies a more restricted area than the other species. Its northern limit is 60° 11' in Norway, 58° 30' in Sweden; it then passes through east Prussia, Lithuania, and crosses the central provinces of Russia, Minsk, Mohilev, ​Tula, and Penza, to Sergievsk near the southern Ural, in lat. 54°. The eastern limit commencing here, extends southwards, taking in the Crimea and Cilicia in Asia Minor. The southern limit extends through Greece, southern Italy, Sardinia, Catalonia, and the northern provinces of Spain to Asturias.
Asa wild tree it does not occur in low-lying plains and alluvial ground; but is met with on the hills and lower ranges of the great mountain chains of Europe. It ascends in Hanover to 1900 feet, in the Alps to 3900 feet, in the Carpathians to 3300 feet, and in the Pyrenees to 5300 feet. In all these localities it ascends considerably higher than the pedunculate oak, reaching, e.g., in the Alps 1500 feet higher than that species. (A.H.)
Propagation and Culture
The oak produces acorns in great abundance in some seasons, generally about one year in three; but this varies very much in different parts of the country; and, so far as I have noticed, fruit occurs oftener and more abundantly in the south and west of England. It begins to bear at a very early age in some cases; and I received, in 1906, a packet of acorns from Miss Woolward, which she assured me were taken from oaks only ten years old from seed. Mr. Emerton, the head gardener at Belton Park, Notts, where they grow, confirms this. In the same season I saw acorns on the Billy Wilkin's Oak, which must be 700 to 800 years old; and was told that the Cowthorpe Oak, which is possibly much older, still bore a few. Acorns are greedily eaten by all domestic animals, but are injurious to cattle if taken in very large quantities. Pheasants and pigeons also consume a great many, and rooks are credited with dropping most of the acorns which so often spring up as seedlings in places far from their parent tree.
The raising of oaks from seed is so easy, and the plants obtained are, as a rule, so much superior to what one can buy, that no one who wishes to plant them should fail to try the experiment by selecting acorns from the best oaks in the neighbourhood. These ripen in October, and should be gathered from the ground as soon as they fall, as dry as possible. They will not keep if stored damp, and my own experience is that they make stronger growth the first year if sown as soon as gathered, because the radicle will then bury itself deep in the ground before winter, and the germination will take place earlier. But if it is desired to sow the acorns where the tree is to grow, they must be protected against mice, rooks, pheasants, and wood-pigeons, all of which are very fond of them. Red lead or paraffin is sometimes used, but the latter is liable to injure the acorn, and it is said that chopped furze placed over the acorn is the best means of protecting them against mice. They should be covered with at least an inch of soil, and, if dibbled, care must be taken that they do not fall in the hole end downwards, but lie on their side in their natural position.
In 1901 I made experiments on the growth of oaks from acorns produced by ​many trees in different parts of England, in order to learn whether the size of the acorns and the vigour of the parent tree had much influence on their strength. I have now watched the growth of these young trees for six seasons, and have arrived at no definite conclusion, though I am much surprised by two facts which have become evident. Lord Ducie has an oak in his park which usually produces acorns of unusual size, some that he has weighed being only 36 to the pound. The plants from these were no stronger than those of normal acorns; and some of the very finest plants that I raised were produced by the small acorns of a very stunted grafted tree with variegated leaves, which I only sowed to see whether any variegation would appear in their leaves. I found, however, that on the average the acorns gathered on my own place on similar soil gave the best results, and that those from Hants and Kent did not produce such good seedlings as those from Nottinghamshire.
The shoot appears above ground about the time the oak comes into leaf, or rather sooner, and the first growth is completed in three weeks or a month. A second growth, corresponding to the summer shoots of the parent tree, is produced in July or August, and sometimes even a third shoot. If sown in a nursery-bed they will be 4 to 12 inches high at the end of the first season, and should be transplanted in the following spring before they are a year old. For if the tap root is not cut early it will become so long and strong in good soil that the transplantation is a severe check to the young tree.
When lined out in the nursery they must remain two years longer, in good soil kept clean, after which the best of them should be 2 to 3 feet high and fit to plant out permanently, except where the herbage is long and coarse. They are sometimes left three years, but this is too long, though, where the land they are to go to is good and not too heavy, liberties may be taken with oaks which could not be risked on poor soil. If not planted out at three years they should be transplanted once more in the nursery, and at five or six years old ought to be 4 or 5 feet high, whilst oaks sown in situ in land covered with herbage or weeds will at the same age often be not more than a foot high and much less strong. In the long run, however, those which have never been transplanted will probably pass the others when once they have established a good root system, which in poor soil is a very slow process. Transplanted oaks, if they do not come away with good straight leaders, are best cut down to the ground the second or third spring after they are planted, when their roots are sufficiently established to throw up a strong leader. Some say that this should not be done until the beginning of June when the sap is running strongly, but experiments which I have made seem to prove that April or May is better. Mice are the worst enemies of young seedling oaks, and where they are numerous cause an immense deal of damage by barking and biting them off close to the ground.
​Billington's account of the immense losses which were caused by mice to the oaks sown in the Forest of Dean, which is quoted at length by Loudon, pp. 1805–7, shows that in places where mice are numerous it is more economical to plant than to sow; and I have on my own property failed to get anything like a good stand of young oaks by sowing, on account of the ravages of mice and rooks, though every precaution which experience could suggest was taken. I tried dibbling in wheat, and sowing in lines and patches, both on cultivated and uncultivated ground, and have only partial or complete failures to record. In better and lighter soils, and especially in woods of large size where rabbits are kept down, I have seen splendid results from self-sown acorns; and Mr. A.C. Forbes's prize essay on the natural reproduction of woods from seed, published in the Transactions of the English Arboricultural Society, v. 239, should be consulted, as well as Loudon's remarks on the same subject, pp. 1804–5.
Mr. Stafford Howard, C.B., who probably knows more about forestry and has done more to improve the management of the Royal Forests than any Commissioner who preceded him, except, perhaps, Lord Glenbervie, has sent me an excellent photograph of a grove of self-sown oaks on his property at Thornbury Castle, Gloucestershire, which has originated from acorns, self sown, in what used to be an osier bed, and which are now about thirty to forty years old. Plate 81 shows their present appearance. On December 29, 1904, Mr. Howard showed me this grove, of which about an acre, containing 139 trees, has been wired in and underplanted with beech at about 6 feet apart. Six trees have been measured and marked with the object of showing whether the future increase of the oaks will pay for the cost of under-planting. As I am not aware that this practice, which in Germany and France is considered good forestry, has ever been properly tested in England, I hope that the results of this experiment will be recorded.
The best illustration of the possibility of converting coppice with standards, into pure oak wood, was shown me in 1900 by Mr. A.C. Forbes in a wood called Derry Hill, on the property of the Marquess of Lansdowne, three miles from Chippenham. In this case the coppice was cut early in the winter, after a good crop of acorns, and completely cleared before the following May. The constant presence of workmen faggoting and cleaning the coppice, not only kept away pheasants and pigeons, but also buried a good many of the acorns; and the soil being suitable for oaks, their growth was so good in the next three years that by cutting away the shoots of the coppice wherever it crowded and overgrew the young oaks, a stand was obtained far thicker, cleaner, and more vigorous than I have ever seen from planted trees. If carefully attended to until the seedlings overtop and smother the remains of the underwood, and provided also the remaining standards are cut and removed before they damage the seedlings, I should expect this wood to become one of the best of its sort in England.
Plate 81.
SELF-SOWN OAKS AT THORNBURY CASTLE
With regard to the effect of transplanting oaks on their future growth and height, opinions differ as much as on any subject. The late Sir James Campbell, who managed Dean Forest for many years, often told me that the oftener you transplanted an oak the better it grew, and he communicated a paper with measurements of some trees in Dean Forest to the International Forestry Exhibition at Edinburgh in 1884 in proof of this; but Mr. Smith, who quotes and refers to these measurements in the paper on oaks above referred to, agrees with me that they do not prove the case; and Mr. Philip Baylis, who succeeded Sir J. Campbell at Dean Forest, writes me as follows:—
"At one time I was of the opinion, founded on the above measurements, that trees were benefited by being transplanted, but have long ago given up that opinion. It is true that for a time after the tree has recovered from the shock of moving, you may, in consequence of the greater number of fibrous roots produced by the moving, get a stimulated growth; but I am convinced that the tree which eventually produces the finest timber tree is the one which is never moved from the place where the seed first germinated."
In this opinion I entirely agree, and believe that though oaks, like other trees, may be drawn up to a considerable height when surrounded closely by other trees, especially the beech, yet that their straight upward growth largely depends on the depth to which the main roots can descend. I do not know that it has ever been proved at what age the tap root decays, and this no doubt depends very largely on the subsoil; but though one may see very large spreading oaks on a thin soil, I never saw a very tall and straight one except on deep land.
In an appendix to the First Report of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, published as a blue-book in 1812, will be found (p. 143) some very interesting and valuable observations on the sowing and transplanting of oaks, in which instances are quoted from several places which go to show that oaks on some soils at least, as at Moccas Court, in Bere Forest, and in the Forest of Dean, will grow as fast or faster when transplanted at 8 to 10 feet high, or even more, than when sown in situ.
In another appendix to the same report, on page 141, are some further observations, made by men of great experience on the growth of oaks from the stool, which prove that when the stools are young and sound and the land good, sound oak trees of as much as 160 cubic feet may be so produced; but that when the stool has ​become old and partially decayed, or when the land is poor, such shoots are not likely to attain any size. The best example I know of an oak wood produced entirely from stools is one below the approach to Carclew in Cornwall, which the late Colonel Tremayne showed me in 1902. Here the trees average 15 to 20 feet apart, and have clean boles 25 to 30 feet high, and are about 4 feet in girth.
Marsham's opinion on the growth of oaks, taken from a paper printed in the Philosophical Transactions, are so much to the point, and his personal experience was spread over such a very long period (from 1719 to 1795) that I quote him as follows:—
"In 1719 I had about two acres sowed with acorns, and from 1729 to L770 I planted oaks from this grove, always leaving the best plants standing for the future grove; but most of the transplanted trees are already larger than those that were not removed; the largest of which is now (1795) but 5 feet 6 inches 8 tenths in circumference; and the largest transplanted tree (which was planted in 1735) is 8 feet 8 inches 7 tenths, viz., near 38 inches gained by transplanting in 60 years. And in beeches from seed, in 1733, the largest is now (1795) but 6 feet 9 inches; and the largest transplanted beech is 7 feet 5 inches 1 tenth, viz., 8 inches larger, although the transplanted beech is eight years younger than that from the seed. This proves that it is better to plant a grove than to raise one from the seed. The expense of planting is inconsiderable, and the planted trees are full as good and handsome, and many years are saved, besides the extra growth of planted trees. But this extra growth will not prove near so great in groves as in single trees. The first grove I planted from these acorns of 1719, was in 1731. In 1732 I made another grove from them, and in 1735 I planted a third grove from them, and in 1753 the last considerable number of plants were taken from the grove, and these are very good trees: so thirty-four years may be saved. But I would by no means advise the planting trees so large, as the trouble and expense will be too much, unless where a shelter or screen is wanted.
"Whether a grove is to be raised from seeds or planted, it is advisable to shelter it round; if from the seed, with such sorts as will grow quicker; and if by planting, with larger and taller trees. The soil in Norfolk is unfavourable to elms; therefore in planting I will venture to recommend hornbeams, as they may be planted large trees. I planted some hornbeams (rather large) in 1757, and, disliking their situation, in 1792 I removed them when they were about three feet in circumference, and did not lose one tree; and they made shoots of near half a yard that year; but I ought to say I cut off their heads.
"Before I quit this subject, I will presume to recommend, if young oaks are unthriving, there is reason to hope they may be helped by cutting them down to a foot or six inches; for in 1750 I planted some oaks from my grove of 1719 into a poorer soil, and although they lived they were sickly; so in 1761 I cut most of them down to one foot, and then by cutting off the side shoots, in three or four years led them into a single stem, and most of them are now thriving and handsome trees, and you ​can hardly see where they were cut off, and some are four feet round; and I have used the same method with unhealthy chestnuts, beech, hornbeam, and wych elm, and with the same success."
Rate of Growth
The rate of growth in the oak is principally governed by the soil and situation, and varies so much that any estimates of its possible increase are of little value unless based on local experience. We often read calculations of the profits of planting, drawn from Continental experience or from exceptionally favourable cases in England, which are very misleading and greatly in excess of reasonable expectations, and there is no tree to which these remarks apply more strongly than to the oak.
Few plantations give more ample proof of this than those made by the Government in the woods at Alice Holt, which were planted between 1810 and 1830, with the object of providing timber for the navy, and which were no doubt done by experienced planters. But the growth has been so poor that, when I visited them in 1905, in company with Mr. Stafford Howard and Mr. Lascelles, we saw but few oaks which looked as if they would ever be fine trees, and their average value was not much over tos. per tree. In one place, called Willow Green, oaks of seventy years old were not over 30 or 4o feet high and not thick enough for gate-posts.
In many parts of the Forest of Dean the results are not much better, and are largely attributed to over-thinning, and to the fact of the ground being thrown open to grazing too soon; but the soil and spring frosts must also have had a good deal to do with it.
In the New Forest the results are better, but not at all equal to what might have been expected. I am indebted to Mr. Stafford Howard for the following information on some of these plantations and the way in which they were made:—
Planting in the New Forest.—In order to make provision for the future needs of the navy, in view of the fact that planting had been greatly neglected in the New Forest, an Act was passed, 9 & 10 Will. III., for that purpose. Under this Act it was provided that 2000 acres should forthwith be enclosed and planted with timber for the use of the navy only, underwood and all other produce being excluded; that 200 acres should be enclosed annually for twenty years following, and that as soon as any of the land thus enclosed was safe from damage from cattle, it should be thrown open and a like area enclosed in its stead. The plantations described were made under the powers of this Act.
The precise form of cultivation employed was as follows:—
"Pits or beds of three spits of ground each were dug a yard apart, and three acorns planted triangularly in each bed. Half a bushel of acorns was allotted for each person to plant in one day. Two regarders attended every day during ​the time of planting to see that it was properly done; and after the ground was fully planted with acorns it was sown with haws, holly berries, sloes, and hazel nuts, drains were cut where necessary, and traps were set to catch mice, and persons attended daily to reset the traps and to keep off crows and other vermin."
Whether from subsequent neglect or not, the plantations thus formed were never thinned at all, but allowed to grow up like a nursery quarter. Although contrary to every theory of plantation management, it cannot be denied that they were in this bad soil successful in growing a heavy crop of oak timber on moderate land.
Denny Enclosure.—There are some very good examples of natural regeneration in places in this wood, which was reinclosed in 1870. A photograph was sent which contrasts the young growth inside the fence of the enclosure with the bareness of the outside where the cattle graze.
Salisbury Trench.—This plantation was made in or about the year 1700, and measures about 100 acres. It was thrown open under an order dated 20th August 1807. It is calculated that there are now left after frequent thinning about sixty trees to the acre. Two years ago it was reinclosed with a view to its gradual regeneration, and there is already a large number of young oak and beech coming up in the open spaces.
North and South Bentley.—These plantations were made about the same time, probably just before that of Salisbury Trench, and are of the same character, except that there is some beech here and there in North Bentley. During the past twenty years the trees felled in Salisbury Trench, being for the most part the poorest ones, have averaged 23½ cubic feet; and there now remain about sixty to the acre. In North Bentley they have averaged about 25 cubic feet, in South Bentley 29 cubic feet, and about sixty trees to the acre remain standing.
One of the best private oak plantations of which the exact age is known is on the property of Lord Kesteven at Banthorpe, near Casewick, Lincolnshire. It was made by Sir John Trollope, grandfather of the present owner, in 1800, with acorns which had to be sown a second time, as they were eaten by mice in 1799. It is on good soil, and, as near as I could judge by the eye, contains about sixty trees to the acre, straight for the most part, and clean up to 30 to 40 feet. In 1905 twelve average trees in the plantation had an average timber length of 34 feet, an average quarter girth of 18 inches, and contained 903 cubic feet without tops or branches, which would make my rough estimate of 5000 feet to the acre very nearly correct, and if profit alone were considered I should say that these trees had now reached the proper age for felling.
The late Mr. John Clutton, who valued timber for the Crown for many years, gave, in 1873, particulars of the size of oaks.
In New Forest, Aldridge Hill, planted 1813:— :
| | | Number. | Contents. | Value. |
| | 1st acre | 75 | 742 | £90 |
| | 2nd acre„ | 79 | 559 | 67 |
| | 3rd acre„ | 77 | 641 | 78 |
| | 4th acre„ | 72 | 683 | 84 |
| In Alice Holt Woods:— |||||
| | Lodge Enclosure | 40 | 837 | 100 |
| | Goose Green | 50 | 812 | 97 |
| | Berewoods, planted 1816 | 54 | 771 | 93 |
| | Berewoods,„ planted„ 1816„ | 70 | 618 | 74 |
| In Dean Forest:— |||||
| | Blakeney Hill, South, planted 1814 | 72 | 720 | 87 |
| | Nag’s Head Plantation planted„ 1814„ | 97 | 425 | 57 |
| | Bromley Hill Plantation plante„ 1812 | 67 | 700 | 84 |
| | High Meadow Woods (no date stated), 1st acre | 30 | 1528 | 214 |
| | High Meadow Woods (no date stated), 2nd acre | 50 | 1480 | 207 |
| In Richmond Park:— |||||
| | Upper Pond, planted 1824 | 60 | 672 | 81 |
| | Kingston Hill, planted„ 1826 | 46 | 628 | 75 |
| | Isabella, planted„ 1831 | 68 | 450 | 54 |
| | Isabella, planted„ 1845 | 110 | 406 | 49 |
In the same volume Mr. Ralph Clutton, in an excellent paper on the self-sown oak woods of Sussex, gives many exact details of the growth of oak without underwood, with measurements and valuations, which should be consulted by all landowners in that part of England.
Under more favourable circumstances, however, oak plantations may yield a good profit, as shown by the following extract from the Norfolk Chronicle, sent me by Sir Hugh Beevor, and printed in Grigor's Eastern Arboretum, p. 360.
"Being enabled from old memoranda of undoubted authority, and from information received several years ago from different persons, who remembered or who assisted in the work, to give you, perhaps, an unusually accurate account of the produce of a piece of land measuring eight acres, planted with acorns in the year 1729, I take the liberty of so doing, and of requesting your insertion of it in your paper whenever you may have the best opportunity. The piece was under the plough at that time, cold and unprofitable, from the practice of underdraining not being then introduced; at Michaelmas 1729 it was sown with wheat, and acorns dibbled in; when reaped, the stubble was left very long, which is supposed to have caused the plants to run up very straight.
“Besides a great many used on the ground, from 1729 to 1763, plants were :
| drawn out and sold to the amount of | £100 | 0 | 0 |
| In the year 1764 by 1500 poles sold | 50 | 0 | 0 |
| In the year„ 1765 by 1374 poles sold„ | 50 | 0 | 0 |
| In the year„ 1767 by 468 poles sold„ | 30 | 0 | 0 |
| In the year„ 177O by 501 poles sold„ | 39 | 18 | 0 |
| In the year„ 1771 by 440 poles sold„ | 21 | 0 | 0 |
| In the year„ 1777 by 280 poles sold„ | 21 | 0 | 0 |
| In the year„ 1781 by 150 poles sold„ | 80 | 0 | 0 |
| In the year„ 1793 by 101 poles sold„ | 21 | 0 | 0 |
| In the year„ 1794 by 150 poles sold„ | 105 | 0 | 0 |
| In the year„ 1797 by 30 trees sold | 20 | 0 | 0 |
| In the year„ 1799 by 100 poles sold„ | 60 | 0 | 0 |
| From the year 1800 to 1810 by 307 trees sold | 389 | 12 | 0 |
| From„ 1811 to the year 1821 by 94 trees sold„ | 219 | 0 | 0 |
| From„ 1821 to the year„ 1833 by 36 trees sold„ | 108 | 0 | 0 |
| | £1314 | 10 | 0 |
| The underwood never came to perfection, but was stubbed up in the year 1767, and the feed of the ground let for 10s. an acre for thirty years | 120 | 0 | 0 |
| Value of the feed at the same price to the present time | 144 | 0 | 0 |
| There are now 320 trees standing, worth if now felled | 1200 | 0 | 0 |
| | £2778 | 10 | 0 |
"The expenses of felling cannot be now correctly ascertained, but the topwood is not included in the above account of receipts, nor a great many trees which have been used on the premises from the year 1763 to the present time, and at a moderate estimate must have much more than paid for the expenses of the labour.—Thos. Howes, Morningthorpe, April 22nd, 1834.”
The Earl of Darnley showed me an oak in “Mount Meadow,” near Cobham, planted by Lady Elizabeth Brownlow, who was born in the year 1800, which therefore could not be much over 100 years old. It has a straight clean bole measuring about 40 feet by 12 feet 10 inches, and a small spreading top.
The following extract from a letter of Robert Marsham to Gilbert White is worth quoting, though I could not identify the tree when I visited the place recently.
“Stratton, 24th July 1790.—I early began planting, and an oake which I ​planted in 1720 is at one foot from the earth 12 feet 6 inches round, and at 14 feet (the half of the timber length) is 8 feet 2 inches. So measuring the bark as timber gives 1164 feet buyer's measure. Perhaps you never heard of a larger oak, and the planter living. I flatter myself that I increased the growth by washing the stem, and digging a circle as far as I supposed the roots to extend, and spreading sawdust, etc., as related in the Phil. Trans. vol. lxvii. p. 12."
Blenkam mentions a remarkable instance of rapid growth:—"Three thriving oaks, growing on a hard gravelly and poor soil, were felled in Nottinghamshire, which on an average girthed 15 feet at three feet from the ground, and each tree contained about 430 cubic feet. The trees were planted in 1692 or 1693, and were about 149 years old when felled. They were perfectly sound and yearly increasing in size."
In a paper by Mr. Clayton a photograph is given of a section across the butt of an oak felled at Ravenfield Park between Doncaster and Sheffield in 1885, which had a butt 36 feet long without a branch, and an average diameter of 5 feet, and which showed only 212 annual rings on a radius of 27¾ inches. If the actual age of this tree was only 212 years, its growth must have been unusually rapid, and a comparison of this with the section of the oak from Wistman's Wood (cf. p. 326) shows how remarkably the growth of trees depends on their situation.
As an illustration of the possible value of a hardwood plantation about forty acres in area in the Sherwood Forest district, ] am able to give the following particulars, for which Mr. Doig, forester to Earl Manvers is my authority. In White's History of Sherwood Forest the land in question is called "Robert Fitzorth's land." It now goes by the name of Osland. It had been in cultivation previous to 1730, about which time it was planted, or perhaps sown, with beech, oak, ash, chestnut, larch, and spruce. The conifers had mostly been cut previous to 1846, before which time there are no records of the value of the thinnings taken from it. Since then the following have been cut or blown down:—
Perhaps the greatest increase of girth on record in the oak is cited by Gadeau de Kerville of three oaks which were felled at Neauphe-sur-Dives (Orne) in Normandy in 1894. Their exact age was not possible to decide, as they were already trimmed and barked and part of the sapwood taken off, but the rings counted by M. de Kerville were 115 to 120, and the girths 6.16, 4.98, and 4.28 metres respectively. He thought that they might be from 150 to 200 years at most, and this would make the average annual increase of the largest, on the section measured, over 5 centimetres per annum.
Remarkable Trees
The mass of information on the oak which exists in English literature, is so great, so scattered, and often so impossible to verify, that I have had great difficulty in making a selection of what is really valuable and authentic, and have preferred rather to speak of trees and woods that we have seen ourselves, and to quote from the letters of living correspondents, than to repeat what has been written by Evelyn, Hunter, Strutt, Selby, Loudon, and other writers, whose works can always be consulted by those desirous of more detailed particulars than our space . will allow.
Some of the most wonderful oaks of England, which we have seen and now figure, must be described more particularly, and among these I think the oaks of Powis Castle come first. Robert Marsham, in a letter communicated by Sir T. Beevor to the Bath and West of England Societies' Transactions, i. 78 (1783), says:—"The handsomest oak I ever saw was in the Earl of Powis' noble park by Ludlow in 1757, though it was but 16 feet 3 inches. But it ran straight and clear of arms, I believe, near full 60 feet, and had a large and fine head."
In April 1904 the Earl of Powis showed me some trees growing in his ancient park at Powis Castle, near Welshpool, Montgomeryshire, which I believe to be actually the champion oaks of Great Britain at the present time. They grow on a Silurian formation at about 300 to 400 feet elevation, with an east aspect, and are, as far as one can judge, perfectly sound in the butt, though one of them lost several branches during the dry seasons between 1893 and 1903, and another has a large decayed limb which, if not taken off, may cause the butt to decay.
Plate 82.
CHAMPION OAK AT POWIS CASTLE
Plate 83.
OAK AT POWIS CASTLE
Plate 84.
LADY POWIS' OAK AT POWIS CASTLE
* table
Of the extraordinary size to which oaks have attained in this district we have a record which is without parallel in this or any country. My attention was called to it by the Earl of Powis, who, knowing the locality, believes it to be true. It is taken from a work called Collections Relating to Montgomeryshire, xiii. 424-425 (1880), published by the Powysland Club at Welshpool, and runs as follows:—
"In 1793 and 1796 a large fall of oak timber took place at Vaynor park in the parish of Berriew, when some trees of enormous dimensions were cut down. Major Corbett Winder has kindly favoured us with a copy of the following memorandum of the particulars of the contents of some of the largest trees:—
'Dimensions of twenty-six of the largest oaks cut down in Vaynor Park in 1793 and 1796.
The counties of Hereford, Worcester, Shropshire, and Stafford have produced and perhaps still contain the largest oaks in England, next to those I have just mentioned, but the long years of agricultural depression which have impoverished so many of the squires of England, have caused the felling of many of the finest. Among these the most celebrated was the Hereford Monarch which grew at Tyberton, near the house of Chandos Lee Warner, Esq., to whom I am indebted for two copies of a print taken from drawings which were made by G.L. Lewis, and published in a scarce work called Portraits of British Forest Trees. One of ​these shows the tree in summer, the other in winter, and prove it to have been a tree of faultless shape and beauty, if not quite equal in bulk to the Champion Oak at Powis Castle. I visited the site of this tree in 1905, but the stump was no longer visible, and the soil, though a good deep red loam, did not show in the other trees any striking evidence of unusual fertility.
Its measurements, as given me by Messrs. Openshaw of Woofferton Court, to whom I am indebted for many particulars about trees in their district, were as follows:—
| Butt | 30 feet by 55½ inches quarter-girth | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | 923 feet. |
| Second length | 60 feet„ by„ 26 inches„ quarter-girth„ | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | 923 feet. |
| One branch | 18 feet„ by„ 42 inches„ quarter-girth„ | | 220 feet.„ |
| Other branches more or less damaged by lightning, about | Other branches more or less damaged by lightning, about | Other branches more or less damaged by lightning, about | 400 feet.„ |
| | | | 1543 feet. |
A record of the tree was sent me by Messrs. Stooke and Sons of Palace Yard, Hereford, as follows:—"The Hereford Monarch.—An Oak tree, containing 1200 cubic feet, felled in Tyberton Park, ten miles from Hereford, April 1877. Length of tree, cut off at 18 inches diameter, 88 feet. Length of butt only 293 feet. Height of tree when growing 130 feet. Circumference at 5 feet from the ground 22 feet 8 inches. Photograph taken of tree as felled, and showing the larger bough as shattered by lightning. Purchased by Messrs. R. and T. Groom and Sons, Wellington, Salop."
Mr. T.E. Groom of Hereford, whose firm bought it, informed me that though the tree would have been worth about £300 before it was struck, it did not actually cost them more than £200. It was felled in consequence of its having been disfigured by a stroke of lightning. Before this it was a perfectly sound tree with over 1500 feet of timber in it. It was still growing and might have become much larger. The butt was quartered and sold to a vat maker who cut it all into thin rims. At the end of the 30 feet of butt were two parallel spires each containing several hundred feet. The larger one was so much broken that it had but little useful timber left in it. The smaller was 60 feet long and about 2 feet in diameter at the top end. This was cut up into railway planking. The tree also made several thousand keys and trenails used on the railway.
Another immense tree was felled in Staffordshire on May 29, 1786, of which Messrs. Openshaw give me the following particulars:—"It grew in the middle of the Grove field on Bath farm, Chillington estate, and measured as follows:—
| Butt, 30 feet by 60 inches=750 feet at 5s | £187 | 10 | 0 |
| Limbs (22), 560 at 1s. 8d. | 46 | 13 | 4 |
| Thirteen cords of wood at 10s. 6d. | 7 | 7 | 0 |
| The root | 2 | 10 | 0 |
| 2½ tons bark | 8 | 8 | 0 |
| | £252 | 8 | 4 |
Plate 85.
TALL OAK AT WHITFIELD
Plate 86.
OAK AT KYRE PARK
Plate 87.
TALL OAKS AT KYRE PARK
One of the tallest oaks which I have ever measured in England is a comparatively young tree in perfect health and vigour, which, though not shut in by other trees, appears to be still growing, and may even attain a greater height. It stands on the edge of a plantation at the bottom of a steep slope facing north-east in Whitfield Park, Herefordshire, the seat of Capt. Percy Clive, who showed it me in 1906. A careful measurement from both sides made it 130 feet high, or perhaps a little more, by 11 feet to inches in girth, with a straight bole of 55 feet free from branches, though two or three small ones had been cut off four years ago. For symmetry and height combined I have not seen its equal in England, and the photograph of it taken by Mr. Foster, though under the circumstances a very good one, fails to give a correct idea of its great height (Plate 85). The soil is old red sandstone, and the tree is of the sessile type.
At Foxley, near Hereford, the seat of the Rev. G.H. Davenport, are many fine oaks, all of which, so far as I saw, are sessile. The best is about 104 feet high by 20 feet girth, with a bole of 20 feet. In the Nash Wood there is a superb lot of young oaks with the tallest and cleanest stems in proportion to their thickness I have seen in England. They may average 90 feet high, and one which I measured was clean and straight to 62 feet and only 3 feet 4 inches in girth. Mr. Davenport believes them to be sixty to seventy years old, and if well taken care of they should in a hundred years be some of the finest of their type in England. |
The largest oaks now standing in Herefordshire that I know of are at Holm Lacy, one of which, a short-boled spreading tree now much decayed, was in 1905 75 feet by 30 feet 2 inches, and 125 yards in circumference of the branches. The other, 90 to 95 feet high, with a bole 25 feet by 23 feet 9 inches, is vigorous and healthy, though perhaps not quite sound.
In Lord Leigh's park at Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwickshire, are many fine old oaks, relics of the Forest of Arden, which grow on a red sandstone soil, and are in many cases long past their prime. The largest stands near the Abbey, and is 28 feet 3 inches in girth; though the top is much broken and decayed, the butt seems sound. Another, just outside the Tantarra Lodge, is a vigorous tree of later date, and measures 22 feet 10 inches in girth, with a fine spreading crown; a third, near the river, is 27 feet 5 inches in girth. The most interesting, however—of which I hope to give an illustration later—is Shakespeare's Oak, so called from the tradition that Shakespeare used to sit and write under it. It grows on the top of a low sandstone cliff, over which at least half the thickness of its trunk projects, and is supported entirely by the roots on the other side to which it leans; it measures no less than 25 feet in girth, and though deeply cleft on one side and hollow, has vigorous branches.
The oak grove at Kyre Park, Worcestershire, the property of Mrs. Baldwyn Childe, was first noticed by the Woolhope Club, who visited it in 1893, and described later by Sir Hugh Beevor, who published a short account of it. I had the pleasure of visiting this wonderful grove in March 1904, when some ​photographs were taken (Plates 86 and 87), which give a good idea of the remarkable size and height of the trees. The soil is a good deep loam on the red sandstone formation. The grove is unfenced and has been open to cattle for many years, and there is no visible evidence of the trees having been drawn up by beech. The majority of them are of the sessile variety, though some are pedunculate oaks, as proved by specimens kindly sent me by Mrs. Baldwyn Childe and by the observation of her very obliging agent, Mr. J.W. Openshaw, who found six trees of the pedunculate to about twenty-four of the sessile form. Sir Hugh Beevor speaks of them as sessile, and at the time I was there it was difficult to distinguish one from the other. As to their age, Mr. Openshaw writes that he could not count the rings because they were so minute, but from the evidence of Habingdon's History of Worcestershire, written in the time of Queen Elizabeth, they must be very old. Habingdon says:—"The Parcke of Cure Wyard is not to be shutt up in silence, for it is adorned with so many tall and mightie oakes as scarce any ground in England within that quantity of akers can showe so many." Most of these trees do not show decay in their tops like so many of our great park oaks, and may thrive for centuries to come.
Sir Hugh Beevor's measurements of their height agree very fairly with my own, but exact measurements of the heights of such trees are difficult to obtain, and they are not so remarkable for their girth as for the way in which they run up with clean stems to a great height. The two tallest are certainly over 130 feet by my own measurements in 1907. Sir Hugh Beevor gives 78 and 79 feet as the first length of two, and one which was blown down in 1897 was 82 feet to the first limb, though only 16 inches in quarter-girth, and with no measurable tops. These trees show very few burrs, but some have large buttresses at the base. The largest, according to Mr. Openshaw, has a stem 83 feet long by 17 feet 8 inches in girth at 5 feet, and contains 1031 cubic feet of timber. Fourteen of them contain over 600 feet, and the smallest tree in the grove has 97 feet, which is considered a big oak in many districts. The tree I] have figured (Plate 86), with Kyre House in the background, is on the outside of the grove, and of different type from most of them. It is the third largest tree in contents, having 694 cubic feet in the butt and 150 cubic feet in the tops. I made it 115 feet high by 18 feet 6 inches at 5 feet, and it looks vigorous and is growing fast. The other tree figured (Plate 87) is 85 feet to the first limb, 13 feet 6 inches in girth at 5 feet, and contains 604 feet in the butt, and 112 in the tops. The measurements given below, taken by Mr. Openshaw, may be thoroughly relied on. They were taken in the usual way by strap, and good allowance made for taper. The heights were taken with the help of a long pole; and both Mr. Openshaw and his father, who has probably as much experience in measuring big oaks for sale as anyone in England, are confident that the grove contains more than they have estimated, though no doubt a quantity of the timber would be broken in falling if cut. Of this, however, there is not the least risk in the lifetime of the present owner, who is much interested in, and very proud of her trees.
​"Kyre Park.—Measure of oak trees in Woodpatch grove made by John W. Openshaw, November 1904. The tape girths are over bark taken at 5 feet. The quarter-girth is the middle of first length taken under bark. Eleven trees removed (1883, 1887, 1897) contained 2990 feet, average 272 feet. Ninety-seven trees now standing contain 38,365 feet, growing on 5 acres, 2 roods, 19 poles of land; an average of 395% feet per tree. A hundred and eight trees contained 41,365 cubic feet, an average of 383 feet per tree. There remain distinct traces of sixty and indistinct traces of ten trees having been removed, including the eleven referred to above."
There is an oak of remarkable size in another part of the Kyre estate called the Hannings, growing on high ground exposed to the north, in a rough pasture overgrown with trees, which no doubt have drawn it up in youth. It is 113 feet in total height, with a trunk nearly straight to about go feet high, where the head begins, and 15 feet 10 inches in girth. Mr. Openshaw and I estimated its contents as follows:—
| 1st length | 18 feet by 48 inches | = | 288 feet. |
| 2nd. | 20 feet by„ 40 inches„ | = | 222 |
| 3rd | 50 feet by„ 24 inches„ | = | 200 |
| | | | 710 feet. |
£100 was refused for this tree a few years ago.
There is also in the deer park a circle with a diameter of fifty yards formed by ten (formerly twelve) oaks of great age and very spreading in habit, and a very ​ancient oak near by, called the Gibbet Oak, on which tradition says that criminals were formerly hung in chains.
Of the difficulty and risk of removing some of these immense trees when steam traction engines were not in use by timber merchants, Mr. Openshaw gave me an excellent instance which he actually saw himself. A very large oak was felled in a field near Woofferton and sold to a naval timber buyer at Exeter. It was so long and heavy that two of the largest timber carriages were fastened together, and 28 horses brought to get it away. In rolling it up on to the carriage one of the chains got round a horse's leg, but they dared not stop to clear it, and the horse was killed. Mr. Openshaw saw the carriage coming down the road with the log on it, and, believing that it could not pass through the turnpike gate, warned the woman who kept it, to get out of the house, as if the log touched it the house would certainly come down. The man in charge of the team, however, ran on in front and steered the leaders so accurately through the gate that, with an inch to spare, it got past in safety.
It seems probable that many of the great oaks in England which are now decayed, owe their lives to the cost and risk of converting and removing them in the days when there were no railways, and good roads were scarce or absent.
The Nunupton Oak.—The remains of a very large fallen oak, not, however, so big as the one at Croft Castle, is described in the Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club, 1870, p. 307. It had long been hollow, and was large enough to contain forty-two sheep at once. It was alive and covered with leaves up till about 1851, when it was set on fire by accident, and was felled soon afterwards, with what object I do not know. In 1870 it was 60 feet long and 26 feet 8 inches in girth, and was still lying in much the same condition when I visited it in 1904.
According to the late Mr. Edwin Lees, whose knowledge of the botany of Worcestershire was very accurate, and whose sketches of old trees, some of which I have, through the kindness of his widow, been allowed to copy, the finest old oak in the county known to him in 1867 stood in a field near the Severn, below Holt, and was known as the Boar Stag Oak. It measured about 34 feet in girth at 3 feet from the base, and might be roughly calculated at 800 years old.
Other remarkable oaks in Worcestershire were described and figured by W. G. Smith, in the Gardeners Chronicle, 1873, p. 1497. They grew in the Lug Meadows, near Moreton, and were known as Adam and Eve. When the Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway was made, Eve, which measured 25 feet in girth, and was quite hollow, was converted by the navvies into a residence: the top was thatched in, a brick fireplace built, and a door fitted, and for months after the line was opened this tree was the only residence of the stationmaster, and was afterwards converted into a lamp-room and so used for fourteen years.
Plate 88.
BILLY WILKIN'S OAK AT MELBURY
At Hazlegrove, Somersetshire, the property of the Rev. A. St. John Mildmay, is a remarkably fine oak, reported to be the largest in the county. It is about 75 feet high by 29 feet 9 inches at 5 feet from the ground, and at ground level spreads out to no less than about 18 yards in circumference. Though it seems sound, yet it has arent on the north-east side, as though struck by lightning, and many of the largest limbs have been broken by wind, and are mended with lead. A drawing of it, made in 1833 when it seems to have been in full vigour, is in Hazlegrove House.
In Melbury Park, Dorsetshire, the seat of the Earl of Ilchester, there is an extraordinary oak, known as Billy Wilkin's Oak (Plate 88), which swells into an immense burry trunk, 38 feet in girth at the ground, and 35 feet at 5 feet up. Above this it falls away a good deal, and is only about 50 feet high. Like all the trees I have seen of this type, of which perhaps it is the largest in England, it is of the pedunculate variety, and bears acorns abundantly.
At Longleat, Wilts, which has a most beautifully timbered park, and is one of the finest places in England, there is an extremely fine tall oak growing in the ​grove of limes which I shall describe later, in a position which makes it difficult to photograph. This tree measures about 100 feet high by 23 feet in girth, and has a fine clean bole of 40 feet. It contains, according to Mr. A.C. Forbes's estimate, about 950 feet of timber.
The finest oak I have seen in Devonshire is in the park of the Hon. Mark Rolle at Bicton, a place long celebrated for its arboretum and for its avenue of Araucarias, which I have elsewhere described. It measures about 78 feet high by 24 feet 8 inches girth at 3 feet, and has a spread of branches of 103 feet in diameter. There are some fine but not extraordinary oaks at Powderham Castle and at Poltimore in the same county.
Near Mottisfont Abbey, Hants, there is a very thick but short pollard oak on the banks of the Test, of which a photograph, by Mr. J. Bailey, Southampton, has been kindly sent me by Mrs. Meinertzhagen, who long resided at Mottisfont. It measures 32 feet in girth and spreads considerably, and, though evidently of very great age, is full of healthy foliage. It must have been frequently flooded, as it stands close to the river.
Near Bramley, Hants, by the road leading to "The Vine," is an oak, which Henry measured in 1905, 100 feet by 22 feet, and which seems quite sound. There are, so far as I know, no oaks now living in the New Forest which are remarkable for their size as compared with the trees I have mentioned.
Of the historical parks of England I know none which contains so many fine oaks as Bagot's Park, near Rugeley, Staffordshire. This must be one of the oldest parks in England, for though Lord Bagot cannot tell me the exact date of its enclosure, he states that it belonged to his family long before 1367, and that in the "Peregrinations of Dr. Boarde, temp. Henry VIII.," printed at the end of Hearne's Benedictus Abba, p. 795, "Baggotte's Park" is mentioned in the list of Staffordshire parks. It is generally said to contain 1500 acres within the pale, but varies from time to time, as land has been added in some places and taken out in others for planting, to be again restored when the woods are grown.
This practice seems to be well worthy of more general adoption, for no one who is acquainted with the condition of the trees in many of our oldest parks can have failed to notice, that they are as a rule going back; and as trees cannot be successfully raised to a great height if deer are not excluded—unless enclosures of considerable size are made about once in a generation, in which trees can be properly drawn up to a sufficient height, before they are thinned and the deer admitted—the time must come, and in some cases already has come, when nothing but wrecks are left, and the singly planted trees, though protected by iron or wooden guards at great cost, are a mere mockery of their predecessors.
The soil in Bagot's Park is poor and cold, being a moist gravelly loam upon a clay or marl bottom, and Lord Bagot says it is not worth 10s. per acre at the present time. It affords, however, an excellent proof of the fact that land which is not valuable from an agricultural point of view, may often be of great value for planting. The woods extend over many hundred acres and consist almost wholly of oak, mostly, I believe, of the pedunculate variety. Many of the trees are of great age, being mentioned by Dr. Plot in 1686 as full-grown timber.
Plate 89.
BEGGAR'S OAK IN BAGOT'S PARK
Plate 90.
OAKS AT BAGOT'S PARK
Plate 91.
KING OAK AT BAGOT'S PARK
Plate 93.
OAK AT BOURTON-ON-THE-WATER
Plate 89 represents the Beggar's Oak, which has been well figured by Strutt in his plate No. 2, and though eighty years have elapsed since that picture was taken, a comparison with my plate shows that very little change has taken place in the tree—thanks to the care with which it has been treated by successive owners, who have worthily kept up the spirit described by Strutt in his account of this tree. It now measures, as nearly as I could estimate, 62 feet high, with a bole of about 33 feet long, and a girth of 24 feet. The roots measure 25 paces round, and the branches cover an area of 114 paces round (according to Lord Bagot's measurement 7850 square feet). Itis one of the finest and best-preserved oaks of its type that I know, for though the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest (Plate 95) is bigger, it is not nearly so sound; and the Bourton Oak (Plate 93), which is taller and in better condition, is not so large in girth or so spreading at the base.
Another very fine tree in this park is the Squitch Bank Oak, also figured by Strutt (Plate 34), who gives its measurements as follows:—height, 61 feet; girth, 21 feet 9 inches; contents, 1012 feet. When I saw it in 1905 its top was dead, and the butt seemed to be decaying at the base internally. I measured it as about 60 feet by 24 feet 10 inches, so that it has increased three feet in girth in eighty years. The Beggar's Oak, in the same time, has increased rather more, but in measuring the girth of such trees as this a few inches higher or lower will often make a great difference, and therefore these rates of increase cannot be considered exact.
Other great trees in this park mentioned by Strutt were the Rakeswood Oak, the Long Coppice Oak, and the twisted oak on the Squitch Bank, which, though I did not see them, still survive. In the Horsepool grove are a number of younger but very tall and straight trees, which have been grown close together, and which Lord Bagot's old woodman, W. Jackson (now dead), said he "could remember so thick that you could hardly swing an axe amongst them." Of these, one, which was called Lord Bagot's Walking-Stick, is the straightest and cleanest oak I ever saw in England, though recently struck by lightning; another was 95 feet by 8 feet 6 inches, with a clean stem 65 feet high. On the other side of the park, at the west end of the grove called the Cliffs, are a number of splendid trees of great size. Two of them, standing near each other, are figured in Plate 90. Of these, the one in the foreground measures about 112 feet by 16 feet 8 inches, with a bole 35 feet high and four great erect limbs. The other, about the same height and a foot less in girth, has a clean bole 45 feet high. One hundred pounds was offered and refused for it. In the same grove, farther east, is an oak with a bole about 40 feet by 15 feet 3 inches, twisted from right to left, and another called the King Oak, which, though now partly hollow, has been perhaps the finest timber oak in the park (Plate 91). It is now about 100 feet high, but has been taller, as the topmost branches are dead, with a straight clean bole 21 feet 3 inches in girth, and must have contained over 1000 feet of timber. It is stated that in 1812 £200 was offered for the first length of this tree, estimated at 12s. per foot, and £93 for the ​remainder, including the bark, estimated at £14 per ton. Near it is a tree of great height, leaning at an angle of about one in four to one side, though quite firm in the ground; and it seemed to me that all the trees in this grove owed their great height and clean stems to their having been drawn up by beech trees, many of which are now dead or dying. Close to the Park Lodge are three very curious and picturesque old trees, one of which is called the Venison Oak, because King John is supposed to have dined under it; another, which we christened the Beer-barrel, is an immense burry shell 10 or 12 feet high and 28 feet round, with hardly any branches; a third we called Gouty Toes, because of a huge swollen root, like a gouty foot, on one side of it.
Dr. Plot, in his Natural History of Staffordshire, p. 213, after speaking of different species of trees growing together, among which were an oak and an ash near Chartley, hollies and oaks at Bagot's Park, and an oak and thorn at Drayton Basset, goes on to speak of trees "that grow so conjoynd that they seem (after the manner of some sort of animals) to prey upon one another," and says: "But the most signal example of this kind is the large fair birch, about the bigness of one's thigh, that grows on the bole of an oak in the lane leading south from Adbaston Church, which has sent down its roots in six branches perpendicularly through the whole length of its trunk and fastened them in the ground, which might be seen in a hole cut in the bottom of the oak; having eaten out the bowells of the old tree (as all the rest will doe) that first gave it life and then support. All which are occasioned, no doubt, by the seeds of those trees dropt by birds in the mould on the boles of the others that lyes commonly there, and is made of the annual rottings of their own leaves."
He goes on to speak of another great oak, "lying near the Lodge house in Ellen Hall Park, of so vast a bulk that my man upon a horse of 15 hands high, standing on one side of it, and I also on horseback on the other could see no part of each other "; and also of an oak that "was felled about twenty years since in Wrottesley Park which, as the worthy Sir Walter Wrottesley (a man far from vanity of imposition) seriously told me, was 15 yards in girth."—"How much less in bigness and number of tuns the oak might be that grew in the New Park at Dudley, and made the table now lying in the old hall at Dudley Castle, is not remembered, but certainly it must be a tree of prodigious height and magnitude out of which a table all of one plank could be cut, 25 yards 3 inches long and wanting but 2 inches of a yard in breadth for the whole length, from which they were forced (it being so much too long for the hall at Dudley) to cut off 7 yards 9 inches, which is the table in the hall at Corbins Hall hard by, the ancient seat of the Corbins."
In the park at Merevale Hall, Warwickshire, the seat of W.F.S. Dugdale, Esq., are a quantity of very fine and tall oaks, which rival those at Bagot's Park, and are, according to Sir H. Maxwell, of the sessile variety, though when I saw them they were not in leaf. They stand at a considerable elevation, on a dry and seemingly rather shallow red sandstone. Many of them are 100 feet and more in height, with clean trunks of 40 to 60 feet long.
Plate 92.
SESSILE OAK AT MEREVALE PARK
Chirk Castle in Denbighshire, the seat of R. Myddleton, Esq., and one of the most ancient inhabited castles in England, is in a park full of oaks, most of which I believe to be of the sessile variety. They are not of great age, having been planted, as Mr. Parker, agent for the property, told me, after the Commonwealth, but are remarkable on account of their uniformly straight boles 30 to 60 feet high. They grow on millstone-grit, where the rock comes very near the surface, on land where the pedunculate variety would not, I think, make nearly such fine trees. | only measured two, one just below the castle which was 100 feet by 11 feet 8 inches, with a straight clean bole of 60 feet; another, probably of greater age, about go feet by 18 feet 2 inches, was beginning to decay at the base. A curious growth is seen on an oak in this drive, a branch having grown out of one stem into another, somewhat in the same style as the beech in Plate 4 of this work.
The trees in the Great Park of Windsor have been described by many writers, and especially by the late Mr. William Menzies in a rare folio published by Longmans in 1864, which gives photographs of some of the finest trees, these being, so far as I know, the first large photographic plates of trees published, and, considering the imperfect development of the art forty years ago, wonderfully good.
They show Queen Victoria's Favourite Oak, which was chosen by her late Majesty shortly after her accession, and which stands with the three other royal trees between High Standing Hill and New Lodge. This is a very well shaped tree of fair size, 70 feet high and 11 feet in girth when Menzies measured it in 1864. Now, as I am informed by Mr. Simmonds, it has increased only 9 inches in girth, Queen Anne's Oak, a very handsome tree in shape, but past its prime, though supposed to be only 400 years old, measured 60 feet in height by 15 feet 3 inches in girth. Queen Charlotte's Oak, a tree of no special beauty, was 65 feet high by 17 feet 3 inches in girth, The great Pollard Oak at Forest Gate, known as William the Conqueror's Oak, and figured in the Supplement to Gardeners' Chronicle, 31st October 1874, supposed by Menzies to be 800 years old, though about 37 feet in girth, and the largest in the forest, is now a wreck; but there are near the Prince Consort's chapel, and in the Cowpond grove, many beautiful tall and straight-grown oaks, one of which, growing near the culvert of the pond, measured by me in March 1904, was from 114 to 118 feet high and to feet ​10 inches in girth. For this tree Mr. Simmons told me, £100 was offered to make the keel of a ship forty or fifty years ago. It should live for many years, and may perhaps become the finest timber oak in Windsor Forest.
Mr. Menzies gives an excellent explanation of the old custom of pollarding oaks and beeches, which has produced the picturesque veterans which are so common in most of our really old parks. For the support of the deer in winter it was customary to lop off the boughs of the oak and beech. The law required that no bough should be cut larger than a buck could turn over with its horns, and after they had been stripped by the deer these branches became the perquisite of the keepers, under the name of "fireboote," or "houseboote." Any timber fit for the navy could not be cut without the sign manual of the King, a rule yet extant; but in times of civil war, and in royal forests which were granted to favourites in the times of the Stuarts, the keepers often cut and sold as timber or firewood a great deal more than the deer needed; and notwithstanding that these matters were investigated by James I. with his national and personal thriftiness, and that the surveyors whom he employed were spoken of by the country people as "shroade and terrible men," these abuses increased to such a point that the growing scarcity of naval timber was a common complaint for centuries.
There is no doubt that browse or lop, being the natural winter food of deer in hard weather, is more suitable for them than beans and maize, which is now given in so many places probably to save trouble. I find in my own park that ash and elm are the favourites, and beech the next best lop for deer, and only give hay when the ground is frozen or covered with snow; but many parks are so overstocked with deer and with cattle in summer that in February and March the former must have some extra food, or a heavy death-rate follows.
Gloucestershire is not famous for fine oaks, though the Boddington Oak, near Tewkesbury, now gone, must have been an exceptionally large tree. The Newland Oak, near Coleford, is an immense pollard, with a short burry trunk no less than 43 feet in girth. An excellent photograph of it has been published as a postcard by Mr. J.W. Porter of Coleford. There are some fine ones in the Winchcombe Valley, near Sudeley Castle, one of which is 25½ feet in girth; but in the Vale of Gloucester elms are commoner than oaks, and I know none of special note, though Mr. J. R. Yorke tells me of a large tree still standing near Forthampton Court.
Plate 94.
OAK AT ALTHORP
In a grove near Campden, close to Norton House, which has been lately restored by the Earl of Harrowby, I was shown a remarkably tall and clean oak over 100 feet high with a straight bole clean for 60 feet, but only 7 feet 5 inches in girth.
Near Bourton-on-the- Water, on the east side of the road to Stow, stands a pedunculate oak which, of its type, is almost equal in size to any I have seen, and which is specially remarkable on account of the perfect condition of all its branches, which, as Plate 93 shows, are growing to the very tips, and which spread over an area of 115 paces in circumference, equal to that of the Beggar's Oak. This tree grows in a grass field on the property of Mrs. Butler of Wick Hill. It measures about 85 feet high by 224 in girth, and has the appearance of having been pollarded at about 12 feet up very early in life. There are some fine tall oaks at Wick Hill, not far off, measuring 85 feet by 14 feet and 80 feet by 13 feet, and there are still some big ones in the cow pastures at Sherborne Park in the same district. But the best of these were felled fifty years ago by the father of the present Lord Sherborne, who has never ceased to lament their loss.
There are many superb oaks in Earl Spencer's park at Althorp, Northants, which were carefully measured by the former forester, Mr. Mitchell, now at Woburn. Lord Spencer's ancestors were evidently great lovers of trees, and followed a practice which is much to be admired. In Althorp Park are several inscribed stones, giving the date of planting and the name of the planter. The earliest of these is in the Heronry, and is dated 1568.
| Of the others one reads as follows— | Another has the legend— |
| This Wood was planted by | This Wood was planted |
| Robert Lord Spencer | by Sir William Spencer, Knight of the Bath |
| In the year of our Lord, | in the year of our Lord |
| 1602-1603 | 1624 |
| | Up and be doing, and God will prosper |
When one sees how small are the trees planted about 300 years ago, when compared with the older trees, one realises the immense time it takes for such oaks to grow. The finest at Althorp is shown on Plate 94. It grows near a farmyard, and is No. 8 in Mitchell's list. It measures about go feet in height, and carries a thick straight stem up to about 45 feet high, and girths 19 feet 6 inches at 5 feet. It must contain at least 1000 feet of timber, and is apparently sound, healthy, and growing, with no signs of decay in the top.
There are some very fine oaks in Burleigh Park, Stamford, the seat of the ​Marquess of Exeter. The best, known as the King Oak, is 100 feet high by 16 feet 6 inches in girth. At Ashridge the oaks are not so fine as the beeches, but the King Oak in that park is a splendid tree, measuring 98 feet by 21 feet 8 inches.
Sherwood Forest, in Nottinghamshire, contains an immense number of very ancient, picturesque, and curious oaks, many of them now mere wrecks, but preserved with care by Earl Manvers, who is the owner of a large area of the unenclosed part of what was formerly a royal forest. I have seen no other place where so many of the trees are covered with immense burrs, and where they assume such extraordinary shapes, as in that part of Sherwood Forest between Edwinstowe and the Buck gate entrance to Thoresby Park. The soil in this district is mostly a poorlooking sand on which the birch thrives remarkably. About seventy years ago the open forest which up to that time had been grazed by sheep, came into the possession of Lord Manvers. An immense quantity of seedling birch then sprang up, and large quantities of acorns were sown to fill up the vacant spaces caused by the decay of the old oaks, most of which are now stag-headed, and dead at the top.
The finest oak now standing in Sherwood Forest is the Queen or Major Oak (Plate 95). This tree, though hollow, and having its branches partly supported by iron stays, is still healthy and vigorous. It measures about 60 feet in height by 30 feet 5 inches in girth, and the spreading roots are about 18 paces round at the ground. The spread of the branches is 30 yards in diameter. It is about three-quarters of a mile from Edwinstowe, and is not far from another tree known as Simon Foster's Oak, which is about 44 feet high and 25 feet in girth.
At Welbeck, the seat of the Duke of Portland, in the same beautiful and wellwooded district, known as the Dukeries, on heavier soil than that at Thoresby, are a number of magnificent oaks which were described and figured in 1790 in a scarce pamphlet by Major Rooke. Of these I saw the Porter Oaks, so called because they stand opposite each other on each side of a gate in the park. When measured by Rooke about 1779 they were as follows:—No. 1. 98 feet high, 23 feet girth at 6 feet; contents, 840 feet. In October 1903, 254 feet; the top having been dead for many years it is now much less in height. No. 2. 88 feet high, 20 feet girth at 6 feet; contents, 744 feet. Now it is 23 feet and rapidly decaying.
Another tree, called by Rooke the "Duke's Walking Stick," of which there is a small figure in Loudon, p. 1766, was in 17709, 111 feet 6 inches high, and 70 feet 6 inches to the first branches; at 6 feet it measured 12 feet in girth, and was estimated to contain 440 cubic feet. A very celebrated oak at Welbeck is the Greendale Oak, which has often been figured and described. In my copy of Strutt there is a good plate of this tree, without number or description, bound at the end of the volume. Tradition says that a bet was made by a former Duke of Portland, that he had an oak so large, that a coach and four could be driven through its trunk, and the hole having been cut, he won his bet. When measured by Rooke it was, above the arch of the hole, 35 feet 3 inches in girth, the hole being 10 feet 3 inches high and 6 feet wide. Even at that time Rooke's figure shows it to have been a mutilated wreck, but the tree is still alive.
Plate 95.
MAJOR OAK IN SHERWOOD FOREST
Plate 96.
BROWN OAK AT ROCKINGHAM PARK
In Rockingham Park, Northants, the seat of the Rev. Wentworth Watson, there are a number of wonderful oaks, many of which are brown, and I had the opportunity, through the kindness of Mr. C. Richardson of Stamford, of seeing several of these felled in September 1903. He told me that, in the whole course of his long experience, he had never seen so many fine brown oaks together as these. The park lies high, on land which looks like oolitic limestone, the rock in some places coming near the surface; but where these oaks grow there is a good depth of loamy soil. Some of the trees which I saw lying were more or less hollow, and required no saw to bring them down. I was anxious to photograph one in the act of falling, and as the fellers were at work on one of the best, I asked them to let me know how long it would take; the roots only being then cut all round the tree. | expected that some hours would be required, but before the camera was fixed to take the tree as it stood, they suddenly called out, "stand clear," and down it came.
Plate 96 shows what the roots of these brown oaks are usually like, but if there is a foot or two of sound wood in the lower part, and the brown colour extends a good way up the trunk, they are still very valuable. I asked the fellers if they could tell a brown oak standing without boring it, and they said they could make a good guess at the colour, though they could not be sure. Probably long experience in a district where brown oak seems to be commoner than elsewhere, is the only guide, if there is one; but stories are told of men going in the night to bore such trees with an auger before trying to buy them, in the hopes of getting a bargain. From a statement sent me by Mr. Richardson, it appears that twenty-six of these trees were sold for £1100, five of them for 4100 each, and contained about 8030 feet, all measured over bark, and nothing allowed for defects.
The best of this lot were eventually sold to Messrs. J.T. Williams of New York, and afterwards bought by the Pullman Company at a very high price. Mr. Richard Dean, of that Company, informs me that he considered the wood superior to any that they had previously used, and was good enough to send me some samples of the veneer made from them, which has been used in decorating their palace railway cars. The largest of these specimens measures 6 feet 1 inch by 2 feet 8 inches without a flaw, and is throughout of a uniform chestnut-brown colour, mottled with silvery patches, formed by the medullary rays, showing that it has been cut from a quartered plank.
​The sandy and gravelly tracts in Essex have extensive woodlands, in which the oak is the principal timber tree. Sound oak trees with boles measuring from 16 to 20 feet in girth are scattered through the county. Oak trees of larger dimensions, many in a more or less decayed condition, have been measured and described by Mr. J.C. Shenstone. Some of these I visited under his guidance in March 1907, and I think the following are worthy of notice:—At Thorrington are four trees from 27 to 31 feet in girth, decayed; at Danbury Park two trees of 31 feet in girth, decayed; at Hatfield Broad Oak the Doodle Oak, 42 feet in girth, decayed; at Havering-atte-Bower Bedford's Oak, 27 feet in girth, decayed; in Easton Park the finest tree is 80 feet by 23 feet, sound and vigorous, and there are many old pollards of great size. One of these, covered with burry growths, is 29 feet in girth; and another, on which the burr is very peculiar from its kidney-shaped lobes, is 334 feet, of which the burr takes up 14 feet. At Marks Hall, near Coggleshall, the property of T.P. Price, Esq., there are very large sound oaks, as well as some relics of the ancient forest; the largest, which is perhaps the finest tree of its kind now standing in the county, is 90 feet by 24 feet 3 inches, and though some large branches are gone on one side it seems sound and vigorous. The only very large oak now left in Epping Forest is the Fairmead Oak, 30 feet in girth, and much decayed. At Thorndon Park, the ancient seat of Lord Petre, are many picturesque relics of the ancient forest; and at Wealside House, Brentwood, is an oak 27 feet in circumference of bole.
Mr. E.R. Pratt of Ryston Hall kindly sends me the following account of—
Kett's Oak at Ryston, Norfolk.—In the year 1547 this tree was the trystingplace of the West Norfolk rebels under the brothers Robert and William Kett. The former and the other " Governors" selected large oak trees under which their Courts sat to administer justice and regulate disorders. The Court in this case did not seem to look upon sheep-stealing as other than a necessary evil, since they left on the tree the following inscription:—
Mr. Prat, your shepe are very fat and we thank you for that we have left you the skinnes to buy your ladye pinnes and you must thank us for that.
| Dimensions in 1840. | Dimensions in 1840. | In 1906. |
| On the ground level, | 46 feet 6 inches. | 49 feet 6 inches. |
| Three feet from the ground, | 27 feet„ 4 inches.„ | 26 feet„ 6 inches.„ |
| Five feet do. | 24 feet„ 3 inches.„ | 23feet„ 11 inches.„ |
From the photograph which accompanied this account it seems that the old tree is still fairly sound and vigorous. In an old map of the seventeenth century Kett's Oak is marked, showing that it was then known as a landmark.
Plate 97.
UMBRELLA OAK AT CASTLE HILL
Cowthorpe Oak.—No oak in England has probably been the subject of so much writing as the Cowthorpe Oak, near Wetherby, which perhaps never was such a great tree as has been supposed, and is now a mere wreck. It has been figured several times, so that I need only refer those who wish to know more of it to a paper with illustrations by Mr. John Clayton, published in the Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, 1903, p. 396. A comparison of the various measurements taken at different times shows great discrepancies. Mr. Clayton attempts to prove by a diagram that the decay of its roots have allowed it to settle into the ground, and thus explains the diminution in its girth, but the discrepancy between measurements taken by different people is considerable. The girth at 5 feet given by Marsham as 36½ feet in 1768, when no hollow or cavity is mentioned as existing in the tree, and the girth given by Mr. Clayton of 36 feet 10½ inches, at 5 feet 3 inches in 1893, are so nearly identical that I do not think Mr. Clayton proves his argument. Whether trees ever subside owing to the decay of their roots is to me a very doubtful point, and I have certainly seen oaks felled which, though of great age and completely hollow, were supported in their original position by a mere shell. I visited the Cowthorpe Oak in July 1906, and found that in its present condition no accurate measurement of it could be taken, a large part of one side having fallen in. I could see no evidence to support Mr. Clayton's idea that the base of the tree had sunk into the ground. The few living branches still bear acorns, from which some seedlings were raised in 1905 by Messrs. Kent and Brydon, nurserymen of Darlington.
The finest oaks in Yorkshire that I have seen or heard of are in the park at Studley Royal, which were described and figured by Loudon from drawings which I have seen in the Marquess of Ripon's library. Though I could not identify the drawings with trees now standing, Loudon gives the dimensions of the largest pedunculate tree as 80 feet by 24 feet 4 inches, and the largest sessile oak, which he says was then the largest in England, as 118 feet by 33½ feet. The best that were shown me were a pedunculate oak 80 feet by 23 feet, a good deal past its prime, and a sessile oak which I made 114 feet by 12 feet 2 inches, a vigorous and healthy tree.
One of the most remarkable oaks in England on account of its shape is the Umbrella Oak at Castlehill, North Devon (Plate 97). This tree had not altered materially during the recollection of the late Earl Fortescue, who lived to be over eighty, though it does not give the impression of very great age. It grows on a slope called Eggesford Bank, near the house, and has a clean bole about 8 feet by 6 feet 8 inches. The branches spread horizontally from one point, and form a close flat surface, of which the twigs are interlaced, and spread to a diameter of about 25 yards. Seedlings have been raised from its acorns, which do not produce this very curious habit, and attempts to reproduce it by grafts have not succeeded.
​Another freak of nature is the Marriage Oak in Eridge Park, Kent, which Lord H. Nevill was good enough to show me. Here a yew and an oak have grown up together, though the two trunks, which measure 16 feet 3 inches in girth, have not combined, the yew having spread its branches widely over the top of the bole of the oak. A similar case is recorded by Mr. A.D. Webster in the South Park at Holwood, Kent. Here the two trees have combined their stems into a normally shaped trunk, which girths 7 feet 10 inches at 5 feet, the yew being only 15 feet high, and spreading 36 feet, while the oak is 35 feet high with a spread of 54 feet.
Pollard oaks, when they are hollow at the top, sometimes support other trees of considerable size, which originate from seeds dropped by birds or brought by the wind. The best living instance of this that I know, is on an oak of no great size at Orwell Park, the seat of E.G. Pretyman, Esq., in Suffolk. This grows in a wood near the Decoy Pond, which is full of large self-sown hollies mixed with oaks, and looks as if it might be part of an original forest. Here a birch about 30 feet high, 20 inches in girth, is growing on the top of the oak, and has formed inside its hollow trunk what on one side seems to be a woody stem, whilst on the other side the roots are still in process of formation within the bole of the oak, which on that side is dead, but on the other has living branches. Henry has seen a similar example on the road between Byfleet and Cobham, on Lady Buxton's property, where the birch, growing out of a stout oak bole, is 49 feet high and 8 inches in diameter.
Wistman's Wood.—After having said so much of big oaks, I must now mention one of the most remarkable oak woods in Britain, called Wistman's or Welshman's Wood, which is on Crockern Tor, Dartmoor, at an elevation of about 1400 feet. It contains a number, perhaps a thousand, of the most stunted and dwarf oaks in existence, growing among granite boulders in a very exposed and windy situation.
Wistman's Wood was described by Burt in his Notes to the second edition of Carrington's Dartmoor, p. 56, and also by Mr. W. Borrer. I am indebted to Mr. E. Squarey of Downton, Wilts, for information in a letter to him by Mr. P.F.S. Amory of Druid, Ashburton, which brings our knowledge up to date, with photographs showing the curious appearance of these trees. The Journal of Forestry, v. 421, in a description of them, says that no acorns are produced; but Mr. J.B. Rowe, editor of the Perambulations of Dartmoor (ed. 1896), in 1895 found two acorns after a long search, one of which, planted at Druid on gth November 1902, is over 4 feet high.
In September 1868 Mr. Wentworth Buller obtained leave from the Prince of Wales to cut down one of these trees in order to find out its age. One section was sent to Kew; and another now in Mr. Amory's possession is 9 inches by 7 in diameter, and shows 163 years' growth, with distinctly marked medullary rays and several deep shakes. The bark is extremely thin, probably owing to the thick coat of moss and lichen which covered it. The slowness of growth in this tree is remarkable, no less than forty years to the inch.
Strutt's Oaks
Strutt in Sylva Britannica, published in 1822, figured no less than twenty-one oak trees, and as I have seen a good many of these myself, it may be interesting to notice their present condition after a lapse of over eighty years.
Plate 1. The Swilcar lawn Oak in Needwood Forest was then supposed to be about 600 years old, and was 21 feet 4½ inches at 6 feet, having increased 2 feet 4 inches in 54 years. When I saw it in 1904 it was about 25 feet in girth, but nearly dead at the top.
Plate 2. The Beggar's Oak in Bagot's Park, fully described above. It measured in 1822, 20 feet; in 1904, 24 feet 1 inch.
Plate 3. The Great Oak at Fredville was in 1822, at 8 feet from the ground, more than 28 feet in girth, and contained above 1400 feet of timber. Now, I am informed by the Rev. S. Sargent, who sends me a photograph, showing that it is in good health, it measures at 3 feet, which seems to be about its smallest girth, 33 feet 6 inches.
Plate 4. The Panshanger Oak, near Earl Cowper's house in Herts, seemed to Strutt to have scarcely reached its prime, though his plate shows that the spire was already dead. It measured in 1822, 19 feet at a yard from the ground, and was supposed to contain 1000 feet of timber. When I saw it in 1905 the topmost limbs were dead or dying, and there was a large rift in the trunk on one side. The girth was 21 feet 4 inches at 5 feet.
Plate 9. The Salcey Forest Oak was a mere wreck in 1822. I know not if it still exists.
Plate 10. The Abbot's Oak at Woburn Abbey was never a very large tree, but if it is the same that I saw in 1905 it remains sound.
Plate 11. The Chandos Oak at Michendon House, Southgate, was also not a firstclass oak, though a very handsome one. It was then only 60 feet by 15 feet 9 inches. Henry's measurements in 1904 were 80 feet in height and 18 feet in girth, with a spread of branches 143 feet in diameter.
Plate 12. The oak called Beauty at Fredville, not a first-class tree among great oaks and figured with a dead top, measured only 16 feet in girth.
Plate 17. The Shelton Oak near Shrewsbury I have not seen. It was a hollow tree of great age, 26 feet in girth, in 1822, and I am told that it is now a mere wreck.
Plate 18. The Bounds Park Oak, near Tonbridge Wells, was a tree in perfect health and vigour when figured by Strutt, and measured 69 feet by 17 feet 9 inches at 12 feet. It is still standing, and as I am informed by Mr. H. J. Wood, has not much changed in appearance.
Plate 19. The Moccas Park Oak was much decayed in 1822, when it measured 36 feet in girth; it still survives, but is fast going to ruin.
Plate 20. The Wotton Oak was never a first-class tree, judging from the plate, and I do not know what is its present condition.
Plate 25. The Cowthorpe Oak has been already discussed.
​Plate 26. Queen Elizabeth's Oak at Huntingfield in Suffolk is, I believe, the same tree which I saw on Lord Huntingfield's property, near the Hill Farm, Strutt quotes from Davy's letters but gives no measurement. It was quite hollow in 1773, and is now divided into three great sections which lean outwards and measure in all 39 feet 8 inches in girth. It has a few green and healthy branches, and the sound parts of the shell are about a foot thick.
Plate 27. Sir Philip Sidney's Oak at Penshurst, Kent, was, in 1822, a very old tree measuring 22 feet in girth.
Plate 28. The King Oak in Savernake Forest was quite hollow when figured by Strutt, and measured 24 feet in girth.
Plate 33. The Twelve Apostles at Burley Lodge, New Forest.
Plate 34. The Squitch Bank Oak in Bagot's Park was in 1822, and still is, one of the finest in England, and is now considered by Lord Bagot the best oak in his park.
Plate 35. Two trees called Gog and Magog near Castle Ashby still survive, and, judging from photographs of them sent me by Mr. Scriven, have not changed much in appearance, though Gog has apparently lost its bark on one side. Though very picturesque, they are not well-shaped trees. The former is now 58 feet by 28 feet, at 3 feet, with contents 1668 feet; the latter is 49 feet by 28½ feet.
Plate 36. The Tall Oak at Fredville is to my eye the best shaped of Strutt's oaks, though not of extraordinary size. He says the stem went up straight and clean to about 78 feet, and the girth at 4 feet was 18 feet.
Among the trees figured in Sylva Scotica, a continuation of the work just cited, there is only one oak, namely, Wallace's Oak at Elderslee or Ellerslie, near Paisley. Many larger and finer oaks than this occur in Scotland. Judging from the figure it is not remarkable except from its historic interest, which seems rather mythical.
The Oak in Scotland
The oak rarely attains in Scotland the size and vigour so commonly met with in England. Mr. Hutchinson has catalogued 151 Scottish oaks, remarkable for size; and of these only six exceeded 20 feet in girth at 5 feet above the ground; the largest recorded by him, at Lee, Lanarkshire, was 22 feet girth at 3 feet up, the total height being 68 feet. The tallest oak recorded by Hutchinson was one at Hopetoun, Linlithgowshire, 110 feet high, with a bole of 93 feet, girthing 8 feet 8 inches, but I saw no tree approaching this height at Hopetoun in 1904. In Dr. Christison's paper on the "Rate of Girth Increase in Trees," the average rate of increase is given for trees at the Edinburgh Botanic Garden; Craigiehall, Linlithgowshire; Pollok, Renfrewshire; and Methven Castle, Perthshire. The rate of course depends on the age of the trees, and is very variable even in the same locality. At ​Methven, an oak planted in 1811 had attained, in 1893, 16 feet in girth, and during the last sixteen years had increased as much as 18 inches in girth.
The "Capon Tree," near Jedburgh, in 1893 was 22 feet 7 inches in girth at the narrowest part of the trunk. It divides at 6 feet into two stems, girthing 16 feet 2 inches and 10 feet 9g inches. The "Pease Tree" at Lee,! Lanark, measured, in 1890, 23 feet 7 inches in girth.
There is a fine oak at Methven Castle called the Pepperwell Oak, which Henry measured in 1904, 85 feet by 20 feet 4 inches. Colonel Smythe informed him that when his ancestor Peter Smythe was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1722, his wife, though in sore straits for money, refused 100 marks for this tree.
In the shrubbery of Scone Palace, Perth, in ground which was formerly gardens belonging to a village, there is an oak, planted in 1805 (growing in black loam 4½ feet deep, resting on sand of unknown depth), which in 1904 was 102 feet high, 36 feet to the first branch, and 11 feet 4 inches in girth at 5 feet up. This shows unusually rapid growth. Near it is another oak, probably of the same age, 98 feet in height, 10 feet 8 inches in girth, with a bole of 25 feet.
The finest oak seen by Henry in Scotland is growing in front of the house at Blair Drummond, Perthshire, the seat of H. S. Home Drummond, Esq. It is 118 feet in height and 17 feet in girth, the first bough coming off at 24 feet up. This oak and a number of others near it probably date from some time after 1730, the year in which the house was built. At Drumlanrig, Dumfriesshire, there is an oak 16 feet in girth, with a bole of 22½ feet, which is estimated to contain 361 cubic feet of timber. At Dalswinton, Dumfriesshire, there are two remarkable oak stools, standing close together. The larger is 28½ feet in girth near the base; and gives off five great stems, 81 feet in height, which average 8 feet in girth. (H.J.E.)
The Oak in Ireland
The most famous oak wood in Ireland was that of Shillelagh in Wicklow, from which is derived the name formerly given to an oak stick, but now erroneously transferred to the blackthorn. From the wood of Shillelagh, according to tradition, were derived the timbers which roof Westminster Hall, and also those on the roof of the chapel of King's College, Cambridge. There is said to be a record in St. Michan's Church, verified by "Hanmer's Chronicle" in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, which states: "The faire greene or commune, now called Ostomontoune Greene, was all wood, and hee that diggeth at this day to any depth shall find the grounde full of great rootes. From thence, anno 1098, King William Rufus, by license of Murchard, had that frame which made up the roofes of Westminster Hall, where no English spider webbeth or breedeth to this day." According to Hayes, the finest trees in Shillelagh were cut down in the time of Charles II. and exported to Holland for the use of the Stadt House, under which hundreds of thousands of piles were driven. In 1692 iron forges were introduced into Shillelagh; and the ruin of the wood ​speedily followed. Great trees, however, still remained till near the end of the eighteenth century. At that time Mr. Sisson, who had purchased large quantities of timber, was given an oak tree of his own choice as a present, and this tree was so large that though forked at the base, each stem was big enough for a mill shaft at more than 50 feet from the butt. Two pieces being appropriated to this use, he sawed the remainder into panels for coach-building, which were sold for £250. In the MSS. of Thomas, Marquess of Rockingham, it is recorded that in 1731 there were standing in the deer park of Shillelagh 2150 oak trees, then valued at £8317, the timber being rated at 1s. 6d. a foot, and the bark at 7s. a barrel. In 1780 there remained of the old reserves 38 trees, which contained 2588 feet of timber. In the adjoining woods of Coolattin, in Hayes' time, there was a considerable number of young healthy oaks, several being 74 feet in girth,
I visited Coolattin in 1906 and was shown many fine trees, though none were of great thickness, the best tree seen being 118 feet high with a clean bole to 4o feet and a girth of 13 feet. All the trees were Quercus sessiliflora.
The largest oak wood in Ireland is in Viscount de Vesci's park at Abbeyleix, Queen's County, where there are several hundred acres of trees of the pedunculate species, growing very close together, especially on the alluvial flats along the river Nore. The trees are of no great height, and have usually short boles with widespreading, stout branches, the largest tree measured being 21 feet in girth.
Hayes gives several instances of the remarkable growth of oak in Ireland. At Ballybeg in Wicklow, a tree growing in alluvial soil, eighty years old, was 12 feet in girth at 8 feet from the ground. At Muckross, Killarney, six trees sown in 1760 measured in 1794, from 3 feet to 4 feet 11 inches in girth at 5 feet from the ground. Ireland, renowned in ancient days for its oak timber, which was valued abroad, is now singularly wanting in even good specimens of solitary oak trees; and Loudon gave in 1838 no examples of fine oak trees growing in Ireland. The finest which have been seen by me are:—At Dartrey, Cootehill, the seat of the Earl of Dartrey, a beautiful symmetrical pedunculate oak, 100 feet high with a girth of 14 feet 4 inches; at Kilmacurragh, Wicklow, a sessile oak 14½ feet in girth; at Glenstal, Limerick, a tree of the same species 164 feet in girth; and at Shane's Castle, Antrim, a pedunculate oak 19 feet in girth. There are also many fine trees with good boles at Doneraile Court, Co. Cork, the largest about 13 feet in girth. (A.H.)
Remarkable Trees Abroad
As the oak is one of the most characteristic British trees we give only a few details of the remarkable oaks which we have seen on the Continent. A good account of the trees in the forests of Retz, Compiegne, and St. Amand was written by Prof. Fisher in the Trans. Eng. Arb. Soc. v. 205.I took part in the excursion which this paper records, and saw the splendid sessile oaks at Compiegne, of which the one called the Czarina's Oak is the finest. This is as wellgrown, but not a finer tree than some of those which I have described and figured in England, though in cubic contents inferior to several of them. The French measure​ments given on the trunk of the tree are—height 36 metres=118 feet; girth at 1.30 metres, 5.20 metres=17 feet; volume 32 cubic metres=1130 feet; value £100. Mr. George Marshall, Past-President of the English Arboricultural Society, who is a timber valuer of great experience, estimated the butt of the tree to contain (46 feet by 42 inches quarter-girth) 550 cubic feet; plus 150 cubic feet for the top, making a total of 700 cubic feet; which, with the addition of an unknown quantity for the branches, always reckoned in France, plus 20 per cent for the difference between the total volume and the English quarter-girth measurement, will come near the French estimate. A photograph of an oak in the Forét de Belléme was reproduced in this report. Its total height was 1194 feet, and its girth at 4 feet 6 inches was 9 feet 9 inches. It is impossible to imagine a tree containing more useful timber and less waste than this tree, which has rather the appearance of a gigantic mop than of an oak as we know them. Prof. Fisher considers Bellême as the finest oak forest in France, and in the Gardeners' Chronicle, xxviii. 220 (1900), speaks of a sessile oak which he measured there 146 feet high, with a clean bole 113 feet by 9 feet 10 inches girth, and a volume of about 500 cubic feet.
Another renowned forest in France is that of Bercé near Chateau du Loir (Sarthe), visited by Henry in 1903 and in 1906, which covers 13,350 acres; and is made up of about 90 per cent of sessile oak and 10 per cent of beech. It is situated on a plateau; the soil being a deep loamy sand, poor in lime. There is not a single pedunculate oak in the forest itself, yet, curiously enough, all those in the hedgerows of the surrounding country are of this form. The sessile oak, owing to its ability to bear shade, is grown densely in the forest, and attains an astonishing height, though it is slow in growth, as far as regards diameter of stem, which averages at 200 years old only 20 inches. The best individual tree, the Chêne Boppe, in 1905 measured 115 feet high, 75 feet to the first branch, and 14 feet in girth. Another tree, measured in 1906, was 125 feet total height, 92 feet to the first branch, and 8 feet in girth. In one section, containing a little less than twenty acres, there stood in 1903, aged 211 years, 1314 oaks and 268 beeches; the oaks averaging 28 inches in diameter. The total amount of the timber was estimated by an accurate survey in 1895 at 275,000 cubic feet, valued at £14,720, or about ₤740 an acre. The yield of the first and second series in this forest, 2700 acres in extent, over which felling is done in sections once every 216 years, works out at 66 cubic feet of timber per acre per annum, equivalent to a net annual revenue per acre of £2:3s. A photograph taken by Henry, shows the shape of these forest oaks, all beautiful, clean, cylindrical stems, and illustrates the way in which the ​woodcutter, to save the seedlings beneath from damage, lops off the crown of the tree with an axe at a point below the first branch before felling the trunk.
The oaks in the German forest of Spessart have been so frequently mentioned by recent writers on Forestry that I need not say anything of them, but doubt whether they equal the oaks in some of the few remaining virgin forests of Slavonia. In 1900 I saw a splendid lot of clean straight logs 3 to 5 feet in diameter, which had been felled in these forests, and floated down the Save to Bosnabrod.
We are indebted to Dr. Simonyi Semadam Sandor, a member of the Hungarian Parliament, for an account of the oaks of Slavonia in the Forest of Brod Petevarad, which is published in a Hungarian journal called Erdzesti Lapok, at Buda Pesth, June 1889, with photographs showing splendid clean-stemmed trees, 30 to 40 metres high, and 2 to 3 metres in diameter.
The European oak seems able to grow well in temperate parts of the southern hemisphere. In Chile it seems as much at home as in Europe, and not only grows much faster, but reproduces itself with such ease from seed on land capable of being irrigated that I saw no reason why it should not be cultivated for its timber.
In South Africa the original Dutch settlers planted oaks near Cape Town, and under one of these trees the Convention was signed by which the Colony was transferred to Great Britain in 1814. On 5th April 1905 my brother posted me a few acorns from this tree, the trunk of which is now hollow and bricked up. I sowed them in May to see whether they would at once revert to their proper season of growth; and out of twenty acorns, three germinated in June, and are now nice young trees, the others never coming up at all.
In North America I have seen no European oaks of any great size, though there is one in Prof. Sargent's grounds near Boston, which has puzzled several good botanists as to its origin.
Injuries to Oaks
The liability of the oak to be struck by lightning was noted by Shakespeare, who, in King Lear, Act III. Scene ii., wrote—
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts.
Mr. Menzies says, "Of all forest trees oaks are, In my experience, the most dangerous. If they have a large spreading head, they are shivered into shreds when struck. If they have long tapering stems, and thus can act almost as conductors, they are not so dangerous, and the lightning will run down the side, ploughing out a deep furrow. I have once seen a beech struck, an ash once, an elm once, a cedar of Lebanon once, but never any other trees, except the oak. And while the others stood comparatively singly in an open space, the oaks have been selected and struck in the midst of a thick wood."
​Several interesting particulars of the effect of lightning on oaks are given by Loudon, who also states that the oak, owing to its roots not being so liable to rot in the ground as those of most trees, is not often blown down. He describes the effect of a hurricane in October 1831, on the splendid oaks growing in Lord Petre's park at Thorndon Hall in Essex, which reminds me of a similar case in April 1890, when I saw, at Narford, in Norfolk, oaks of 2 to 3 feet in diameter broken off at 4 to 10 feet from the ground by the force of the wind, which tore up many plantations of spruce and other shallow-rooting trees by the roots.
Sir Charles Strickland tells me that a very tall young oak tree 54 feet to the first branch, and quite straight, growing at Housham in Yorkshire, nearly on a level with the river Derwent, was, in the severe winter of 1860-61, completely killed by a frost which was the severest in his recollection. Though he has no record of the temperature at Housham, yet he believes that at Appleby, in Lincolnshire, it was as low as 154 below zero, and generally in the northern counties the thermometer went below zero. Many other oaks were killed in the woods and in the hedgerows between Malton and Pickering by the same frost.
The various insects which attack the oak are too numerous to be mentioned in detail, but are described at length by Loudon and by many other authors.
The galls, which are so common on the leaves, are produced by several species of Cynips, and the so-called oak-apples are the result of an injury by an insect of the same family.
Mistletoe on the Oak
Since the time of Pliny, who describes the worship of the oak, and especially of the mistletoe-bearing oak by the Druids, the occurrence of this parasite on the oak has always been looked on as a rarity. Loudon only mentions two trees known to him, of which one near Ledbury was cut down in 1831, and another at Eastnor Castle is still living; but we have now been able to collect many more authentic records. A paper on the subject by the late Dr. Bull of Hereford gives particulars of several, and states that it is considered a dangerous practice to interfere with a mistletoe-bearing oak. One at St. Diels, near Monmouth, was cut down by the bailiff about 1853, and the owner of the estate immediately dismissed him. A woodman who climbed the Eastnor tree to get some mistletoe, fell down and broke his leg, and other similar stories are quoted. The finest mistletoe oak I have seen was shown me by Sir George Cornewall, at Bredwardine, in 1902. When described by Dr. Bull, mistletoe was growing on it in no less than fifteen different places, and it measured 78 feet by 11 feet 6 inches in girth. Sir George has lately found another in his park, and has a third on his estate in Woodbury Wood.
This part of England seems to be, for some reason, the most prolific in England ​in mistletoe oaks; and it will be observed in the list which follows that there are none reported in the northern half of Great Britain.
The subject has been recently studied by M.H. Gadeau de Kerville, who records in Normandy alone no less than 26 mistletoe-bearing oaks, living or recently felled, of which a list with exact particulars of their locality is given, pp. 298-301. An excellent illustration of one of the finest of these growing on the farm of Bois, at Isigny-le-Buat, Department of Manche, shows a large and well-shaped tree, about 60 feet by 16 feet, of the pedunculate variety, which is covered with tufts of mistletoe, some of them growing on the trunk, and of very large size. M. de Kerville estimates the age of this tree at 200 to 300 years, and says that it has begun to deteriorate, as the dead branches show. M. Eugène Ormont states that a tuft of mistletoe of about a foot in length, which he examined on an oak, was eleven years old and seemed slower in its growth and yellower in colour than mistletoe growing on the apple.
List of reported Mistletoe-bearing Oaks in England
| Locality. | Authority. | Date. | Particulars. |
| Bredwardine, Hereford, | Dr. Bull, | 1870 |
| | H.J.E. | 1902 |
| Moccas Park, do., | Rev. Sir G. Cornewall, | 1904 |
| Woodbury Wood, do., | do. | do. |
| Tedstone Delamere, do., | Dr. Bull, | 1870 |
| Haven in the forest of Deerfold, do., | do., | do. |
| Badham's Court, near Chepstow, Monmouth, | do., | do. |
| Near the Hendre, Llangattock, do., | do. | do. | This tree is not known to exist now, so far as I can learn, at the Hendre. |
| Eastnor Castle, Worcestershire, | do., | do. |
| | H.J.E. | 1903 |
| Lindridge, Worcestershire, | Leisure Hour, | 1873 |
| Frampton-on-Severn, Gloucestershire, | H. Clifford, Esq., | 1904 | Mentioned by Lees in 1857, and still living. |
| Knightwick Church, Worcester, | Leisure Hour, | 1873 |
| Plasnewydd, Anglesea, in Marquis of Angle- sea's Park, | Lees, | 1857 |
| Hackwood Park, Basingstoke, Hants, | Leisure Hour, | 1873 |
| Lee Court, Kent, | do., | do. |
| Burningfold Farm, Dunsfold, Surrey, | do., | do. |
| Bodlam's Court, Sunbury Park, do., | do., | do. |
| Shottesham, Norfolk, | Francis, in Trimmer's Flora of Norfolk, | 1866 |
| Alderley, Norfolk, | Winter, in do., | do. |
| Not far from Plymouth, by side of S. Devon railway, | Britten, | 1884 |
| Near Cheltenham, | Leisure Hour, | 1873 | I can get no confirmation of this. |
| Seven miles from Godalming, | Menzies, | 1860 |
Bark
The bark of the oak was until recently a valuable source of revenue in England, but, owing to the introduction of other materials for tanning, has now fallen so much in price that in some districts it hardly pays to take off, and large areas of coppice oak in the western counties have become almost worthless in consequence. Whether the leather made by these modern substitutes is as durable as that produced under the old system is doubtful, but the comparative slowness of the process of tanning by oak bark seems to be one of the chief reasons for the change.
Professor H. R. Procter of the Leather Industries Department of the Leeds University, whom I consulted on this question, tells me that though he agrees with me that no tree at present grown in England is worth growing for the sake of its bark alone, yet he thinks that it will be long before the demand for oak bark entirely disappears. He considers that though leather tanned with oak bark alone is perhaps the best for boots and shoes, the cost of the slow process is so much greater in proportion to quality, that the leather so tanned is practically an article of luxury.
In the Land Agents' Record for October 29, 1904, there is an article on the price of oak bark, which is stated to have fallen from £8 a ton in the writer's experience to 47s. 6d.; and when the cost of peeling, which averages about 25s. per ton, the cost of loading and delivering to the station, and the cost of railway carriage is added, little or nothing is left for bark grown at any distance from its market. Since then the price in some districts has risen a little, but in this case, as in others, it is clear that chemically prepared substitutes are killing an industry of much importance to landowners and labourers.
Timber
With regard to the difference in the timber of the two varieties of oak, we have, strange to say, little or no certain experience in England. Laslett says that though he agrees generally with the opinion then prevalent, that Q. sessiliflora was slightly inferior to pedunculata, he feels bound to admit that during a long experience in working them, he has not been able to discover any important difference between the two varieties. He says that very fine specimens of long clean oaks of the sessile form were found in the Forest of Dean, which, however, were liable both to cup and star shake, and that he is inclined to believe that these defects are less common in Q. pedunculata.
Though little attention is now paid to the difference of winter- and spring-felled oak timber, and it seems as if most users of wood will pay as much for the latter as for the former, yet, considering the low price of bark and the importance of durability, I should strongly advise the former being used for all first-class work.
Laslett, who, as timber inspector to the Admiralty, had probably as much experience as any man of his day, and more than any one at the present time, ​gives in chapter xi. many proofs in support of his opinion that winter-felled oak is better than spring-felled; though the practice he recommends was to bark the trees standing, and fell them in the succeeding winter, a custom which is still followed in some parts in England. He also states, on page 73, that having carefully examined and compared many pieces of both winter- and spring- or summer-felled logs, he found almost invariably that the winter-cut timber, after being a few years in store, was in better condition than that which had been cut in the spring. "The winter-felled logs were sounder, less rent by shakes, and the centres or early growths generally showed less of incipient decay than the spring-felled."
So much has been written about the timber of the oak that it seems unnecessary to go into very great detail with regard to this subject, especially as this timber, of which little is now required for the navy, is being ousted by iron and by cheaper imported timber from many of its former uses, and is of far less value than formerly; but though at the present time English oak is out of fashion, there is no doubt that such durable and beautiful wood must always have a considerable value to those who do not sacrifice durability to cheapness, and who have patience to wait until it has been properly seasoned, which requires from two to six years according to the thickness of the plank.
There are so many proofs of its everlasting character in the form of roofs and in the old timbered buildings which are common in Cheshire, and of which so many beautiful illustrations are given in Country Life, that I need not repeat them, but an extraordinary instance of its longevity when exposed to the weather was pointed out to me by the late Lord Arundell of Wardour in the ruins of Wardour Castle. This building, according to an account of it published in The Antiguary, November 23, 1873, was inhabited before the reign of Edward III., and was besieged and sacked by the Parliamentary army in the reign of Charles I., and blown up by its owner, Lord Arundell, in 1644, rather than allow it to remain in the hands of the enemy. An oak lintel, which must therefore have been exposed to the weather for 260 years, still remained in situ in 1903, and as far as I could see from below was not much decayed.
In a paper by W. Atkinson it is said that during the last thirty years he had taken every opportunity of procuring specimens of wood from old buildings, and particularly what the carpenters called chestnut, but never in a single instance had he seen a piece of chestnut, the wood so called being always that of Q. sessiliflora, mistaken for chestnut from a deficiency of the flower or silver grain. He goes on to say: "The roof of Westminster Hall has been said to be chestnut; while it was under repair I procured specimens from different parts of the roof, the whole of them were oak, and chiefly the Q. sessiliflora. Most of the black oak from trees dug out of the ground I have found to be of the same kind. From finding the wood of the oldest buildings about London to be chiefly of the Q. sessilifiora, I should suppose that some centuries ago the chief part of the natural woods were of that kind; at present the greater part of the oak grown in the south of England is Q. pedunculata. Specimens of oaks that I have procured from different parts of ​Yorkshire and the county of Durham have all been Q. sessiliflora, which is very scarce in the south. There are some trees of it at Kenwood, the Earl of Mansfield's, near Highgate, which I believe to be one of the oldest woods near London, and a greater part of the Q. sessiliflora appears to be trees from old stools." To this the Secretary, Mr. G. Bentham, adds a note, as follows:—"Mr. Atkinson's opinion on this subject is confirmed in a remarkable manner by the discovery that the oak in an extensive submarine forest near Hastings is Q. sessiliflora."
Brown Oak
In a paper on British timber which I read before the Surveyors' Institution in February 1904, I called attention to a form of oak timber, known as "brown oak," which does not appear to have been much noticed by any previous writer. Though after very careful investigation I have failed to ascertain with certainty the causes which produce it, I am inclined to believe that it is not, as some have thought, caused by a fungus; though spores of some fungoid mycelium are often found running through it; but that the change of colour is produced, especially on certain soils and in certain localities, by age. And though I have evidence that in exceptional cases the heartwood of quite young oaks is brown, the majority of the trees which produce this beautiful and valuable wood are in an incipient stage of decay, and often hollow, leaving only a shell of more or less sound wood. The change of colour in some trees commences at the ground and extends upwards, or less commonly begins in the upper part and extends downwards. No one can be certain, without boring or felling the tree, whether the wood is brown or how far the colour may extend; but if the tree is allowed to stand too long after it has become brown it loses its "nature," to use a carpenter's expression, and is often so shaky and full of cracks that it is of little use. The sapwood always remains of the normal colour. But when a brown oak of good rich colour contains sound and solid timber it is superior to any wood I know for the interior decoration of houses, and for the making of sideboards and other heavy furniture.
Until about fifty years ago this wood was little valued in England, and I am told that on the Duke of Bedford's estate its use was prohibited in building contracts because it was supposed to be unsound. Even now it is hardly known or recognised as valuable except in certain parts of England, and is often sold far below its real value by inexperienced persons. But the Americans have created such a demand ​for it. that most timber merchants are now quick to appreciate the difference between brown and common oak, and the best qualities of it are sometimes sold for as much as 10s. per cubic foot.
When the wood shows the blackish streaks running through it, which is known as tortoise-shell grain, it is most valued for cutting veneers. These are laid in thin sheets on other wood, partly to make it go farther, and also because this wood is so difficult to season properly, and so wasteful in conversion that it is not safe to use in the form of thick boards.
My friend, Dr. Weld of Boston, U.S.A., who is a great connoisseur and admirer of fine woods, and especially of brown oak, showed me at his house the most magnificent specimens of panelling and wainscoting, done under his own supervision by Messrs. Noyes and Whitcombe of Boston, with oak which he selected and purchased himself in England. In their works I saw a quantity of carved brown oak pews, and a very large brown oak organ front designed by Mr. C. Brigham, architect, of 12 Bosworth Street, Boston, for a memorial church at Fairhaven, Mass. Mr. Whitcombe was good enough to show me the manner in which the boards are seasoned after they are cut from the logs, which are imported in the rough as an unmanufactured product to escape the heavy duty. Dry white pine boards fresh from the hot-air kiln are laid on each side of the oak boards, and properly stripped in an open covered shed. When the moisture has been partially absorbed, they are all turned over and again sandwiched between fresh dry pine boards; thus saving a great deal of time, which is rarely given to season timber properly in America, and preparing the wood to stand the conditions of dryness, which are more trying to furniture in American than in English houses.
Mr. C. M'Kim, a distinguished American architect, writes me as follows respecting English oak:—"We regard it as the most beautiful oak in the world, costly because of its scarcity and the duties imposed upon it; requiring the best workmanship in putting it together; but preferred above all others for its finer quality, richer colour, and endurance. The most important and dignified panelled rooms in this country are furnished in English oak." I also was pleased to find that the great dining-room in the White House at Washington is completely panelled with English brown oak.
Mr. F.H. Bacon of the A.H. Davenport Company of Boston, one of the best firms for cabinet work in the United States, writes:—"Mr. Davenport has been using it in his business for at least thirty years, and we think it is a wood which will always be in demand, as a room furnished with English oak has a richness and depth of tone which is impossible to get with any other oak. The wood is becoming more expensive, but I think it will always be used by people who can afford it. It is difficult to work; the plain surfaces are generally veneered. It stands perfectly well without warping and twisting, and is not attacked by worms as walnut wood is."
The best example that I have seen of fine brown oak work in England is at Rockhurst, the residence of the late Sir Richard Farrant, in Sussex. This ​was done by Marsh, Cribb, and Company of Leeds, with brown pollard oak, showing very varied figure, and superior in this respect even to that of Dr. Weld's house.
This wood requires no varnish, but when simply polished with wax and shellac only, in the manner adopted by Dr. Weld, is as rich as any mahogany. It is to some extent imitated by a practice called fuming, which is now very commonly used to give a darker colour to foreign oak, and thus make it resemble old oak, which has become so fashionable; but fumed oak can easily be distinguished from, and is far inferior to real brown oak, which also varies a good deal in colour when new.
Pollard Oak
There is another form of oak wood usually called pollard, which is produced from the burrs or swellings which often appear on old oaks, especially in very dry and in wet ground. The real cause of these excrescences is not yet fully explained; but in some places, and especially in Sherwood Forest, they are very common, and when cut, show a twisted and contorted grain, sometimes full of little eyes which resemble those of the so-called "birds'-eye maple," a variety of the wood of American maple, of which we shall speak later.
Pollard oak is usually full of little cracks, and is best cut into thin slices or "plating" 4 inch thick or less. When polished the little cracks are filled up, and when the wood is mottled with brown, yellow, and pink in various shades it is very beautiful. An oak of this type, which was only about 10 feet high and 9 feet in girth, grew on Chedworth Downs, Gloucestershire, and was given to me by the Earl of Eldon. Its wood, when cut into veneer, was throughout the whole thickness of the tree more like that of birds'-eye maple than oak, and has served to make the front of a very handsome bookcase.
Oak Panelling
I cannot pass from this subject without alluding to the use of English oak for panelling walls, a practice which was almost universal in houses built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and of which many beautiful examples still exist. Modern architects, however, do not seem to have properly appreciated, that the beauty and fitness of oak for such work depends on the extent to which the "figure," "flower," "silver grain," or "flash" is shown—all these terms are used to express the bright glossy patches and lines which the medullary rays of oak show when cut "on the true quarter."
In our ancestors' time, when roads were bad or non-existent, and when sawmills were unknown, it was necessary to cut up large oak trees where they fell, either by digging a saw pit near or under them, or by cross-cutting them into suitable lengths, and then "rending," cleaving, or splitting them into slabs. This practice is now adopted principally for making oak palings and for wheel spokes, which are much stronger ​when rent than when sawn: but it will be found on examination of the Dale of old panelling that it was usually rent, and as you can only cleave oak on the line of the medullary rays, the figure shown by rent oak is much better and more abundant than when sawn on the quarter, and though the practice is more wasteful and is only possible in the case of straight-grained trees, yet it should certainly be tried by those who admire finely figured oak.
Strange to say, the importance of selecting and matching the figured pieces, and of placing them in the most conspicuous positions, does not seem to be noticed, for I have seen in modern houses, and in old castles on whose restoration no expense has been spared, panelling in which new and plain pieces have Peet introduced amongst splendid old panels, and finely figured new and old panels put in dark corners where they were unseen. When one considers how small a proportion the cost of the wood bears to the workmanship, it is extraordinary that this should be allowed, or that American oak should be used, as I have seen sometimes done, in restoring ancient houses, when infinitely better and more beautiful wood was growing, and often rotting on its roots, within a very short distance.
Experienced cleavers are not to be found in every county, but in Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Hants, and where rent oak palings are much used, as in the neighbourhood of London, such men may be found, who with a tool called a "break-axe" or "flammer," will convert straight-grained oak into slabs of suitable dimensions for panelling, which, when properly seasoned, show better figure than sawn timber. For this purpose logs of not less than three feet diameter should be selected, as straight as possible in the grain, and cut into the lengths of which the panels are required. The slabs come out rather irregular in size, and are, of course, much thicker on the outside. They should be carefully piled for about twelve months in a dry, airy place, when they can be reduced by a thin circular saw and by planing to the proper thickness, choosing whichever side shows the best figure for the face. Longer and narrower pieces, either rent or sawn, must be selected for the stiles and rails, and if put together by a competent joiner, I can say from experience that the effect will be much Superior to work done by the best London firms with foreign timber, especially when brown oak can be found fit for rending.
The diagram, Fig. 1, on the following page shows the best method of rending oak to show its fine figure.
For quartering by the saw different methods are adopted, the best being that shown on the following page, Figs. 2 and 3, taken, by permission of Messrs. Rider and Son, from a very useful little book. By this method, which, though rather wasteful, produces the best results, only the central boards of each cut are on the true quarter, and the others are narrower, and more or less across the natural line of cleavage.
Of the different styles of oak panelling it is not my intention to speak, but it seems to me that elaborate carving is out of place in such wood as this, which wants no extraneous adornment, Many beautiful specimens of ancient panelling in various ​styles may be seen in the galleries of the South Kensington Museum, among which that taken out of Sizergh Castle, Westmoreland, is, though rough in workmanship, a good example of ornamentation with native wood.
One of the most elaborate instances of room-decoration in woodwork of old times is seen in the dining-room at Gilling Castle, near York, formerly the property of the Fairfax family, now belonging to W.S. Hunter, Esq. It is a room about 30 by 20 feet, and is panelled with large panels of oak, in oblongs 2 feet 4 inches wide and 3 feet deep, surrounded by heavy carved mouldings. Each panel is inlaid with highly intricate and varied geometrical patterns in narrow lines of black and white wood, which I believe to be bog oak and holly, inlaid in narrow lines, and forming an elongated diamond in the middle of the panel.
Fig. 1. (1) Sapwood; best taken off. (2) Feather-edged boards somewhat variable in width and thickness, but following the natural line of cleavage on the medullary rays of the wood.
Figs. 2 and 3. Methods of quartering by the saw.
The four corners of each panel are also inlaid with flowers done in similar wood. This work runs from the ground up to about 10 feet high, above which an elaborate decoration in colour, containing many family trees and coats of arms, reaches to the ceiling. Some good judges think this is the most beautiful room in England, but without resorting to such minute and fanciful patterns, I may safely say that good plain oak panelling, in which the stiles and rails are duly proportioned, and the silver grain well matched in each panel, gives not only the handsomest and richest effect of any wall covering I know, but is also the most durable, improving in colour with age, and if done with one's own timber, affords an interest which no Italian frescoes or plaster work can give.
In the chapel, in the hall, and in the Earl's study at Powderham Castle, Devonshire, are very good examples of pews and panelling, both of the linen pattern and carved panels, but though the linen pattern was once a favourite one, and is still copied by some decorators, it seems to me a mistaken notion to imitate the folds of a textile material in wood, and especially in oak.
Wainscot Oak
What is usually known under this name was for many years imported from the Baltic seaports of Dantzic, Riga, and Libau, and was the produce of forests 'in the interior of the Russian Baltic Provinces, and of Russian Poland, from whence it was brought to the coast by water, until railways were made. According to Laslett, the Riga timber, though of moderate dimensions, had the medullary rays more numerous and better marked than the Dantzic oak, and came to market in the form of hewn billets of about 18 feet.
But as the supplies of this oak became less, and the demand greater, a fresh source of supply was found in Slavonia and South Hungary, which for many years has furnished about half the total import through the ports of Trieste and Fiume. Mr. A. Howard tells me that the size and quality of this was better than the Baltic oak, but owing to the Austrian Government having recently diminished their cuttings in consequence of the rapid diminution of mature timber, a large quantity of billets are now exported from Odessa, which are believed to come from the forests of Podolia and Volhynia, and other provinces of South-West Russia.
All this imported oak is milder and more easily worked than English oak, and as only selected logs free from knots are shipped, it can be converted into boards with less waste and risk than home-grown timber. We have no certain evidence as to the existence of a sufficient quantity in Russia to keep up the supply either from the Baltic or Odessa, and though the more scientific foresters of Austria are taking steps to restore their oak forests by natural regeneration, it is probable that the French, who consume an immense quantity of oak from this region, will take all they can get, and this, coupled with the approaching disappearance of American oak large enough for quartering, must, sooner or later, cause our own timber when long and clean to be much more valuable than it is at present.
A note in Holinshed's Chronicles, vol. i. p. 357 (ed. 1807), seems to show that wainscot oak was already exported from the Baltic as long ago as Queen Elizabeth's reign, but whether "Danske" means that it came in Danish ships or from the port of Dantzig I cannot ascertain, though Colonel Brookfield, H.B.M. Consul at that port, has made inquiry on the subject.
Laslett is the only practical English writer I know of who was personally acquainted with the oak in its native forests in the east of Europe, having been employed by the Admiralty to survey the forests near Brussa, in Asia Minor, as well as in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, Styria, and Hungary. He states that in the ​forests south-east of Brussa he found oaks resembling the English Q. Robur on the upper ranges of the mountains, while in the valleys Q. Cerris or the mossy-cupped oak was found. In Austria, he says, that in the Kogarate mountains, and in the district between the rivers Verbas and Okvina they were chiefly of the sessile variety, mixed occasionally with Q. Cerris, and all of straight growth with long clean stems, generally of good quality, but at that time no attempt had been made to utilise them except for cleaving cask staves.
Of all the oaks of which trials were made in our Government dockyards during the period at which British oak became scarce, Laslett says that the white oak of North America compared very favourably with all the foreign oaks, but proved to be slightly inferior in strength to English oaks.
Bog Oak
This is obtained from trees which have been buried in peat bogs for centuries, and which has become blackened by the peat water. It is very commonly found in Ireland, and in some parts of England and Scotland. When large and sound enough it is used for furniture, picture frames, and for small ornamental work, but as a rule is so full of shakes, and cracks so much in drying after it is dug up, that it is of no use for cabinet-making except in the form of inlay, or marqueterie. Occasionally, however, fine sound logs are dug out, which if slowly seasoned in an airy cellar may be used for larger work. One of the best examples I have seen of black oak was a door exhibited by Mr. E.R. Pratt of Ryston at the Royal Agricultural Society's Show at Park Royal in 1905, made from oak found on his property in Norfolk. He tells me that the planks after being sawn are dressed two or three times with "fuel" or "dead" oil which replaces the evaporated water by the refuse of petroleum, a substance theoretically similar to that lost by age. The result is certainly very successful.
Many cases have been recorded and published of the great durability of the timber of the oak under ground and under water; but I have come across no relic of the past so interesting in this respect as the prehistoric boat which was dug up at Brigg, in Lincolnshire, in 1884, when digging a foundation for a gasometer. This has been well described by the Rev. D. Cary Elwes in a lecture, which was published in 1903, and a photograph of it is published in a recent pamphlet by the Rev. A.N. Claye, for which I am indebted to Miss Woolward. This wonderfully preserved dug-out was hollowed out of one huge oak log 48½ feet long, and approximately 6 feet in diameter, which showed no signs of branches, a log which must have contained nearly 1000 feet of timber, and which could not be matched now in England, or, so far as we know, in Europe or North America. The boat is 4 feet 3 inches wide by 2 feet 8 inches deep at the bows, and 4 feet 6 inches by 3 feet 4 inches at the stern, which was the root end of the tree. The sides are about 2 inches thick, the bottom 4 inches at the bows, and as much as 16 inches at the stern. The stern piece was ​ingeniously fitted in, though not found in situ, and a large rift on one side had been still more cleverly repaired with wooden patches caulked with moss. No metal had been used in any part of it. The boat was found embedded in the blue and brown clay which underlies the peat, and is considered on geological evidence, which is given with great detail, to be from 2600 to 3000 years old. It was offered by Mr. Cary Elwes to the British Museum, but was declined as being too large; it is, however, now suitably housed at Brigg.
Many similar oaken boats of smaller dimensions have been discovered in various parts of England, and I saw one myself which had been just dug out of a peat bed close to Shapwick Station, in Somersetshire, in September 1906, which was 20 feet long by 2 feet 10 inches wide.
At Brigg an ancient causeway was discovered, which is described by Mr, Claye in the same pamphlet, and a photograph given. This roadway was found in a brickyard lying between the two branches of the river, under a deposit of blue alluvial clay, and above the forest bed which lies on the top of the glacial drift, and was probably made by the early Britons to secure a safe passage across the valley when it was little more than a swamp. Small trees and branches of yew were laid lengthwise, and across them rough planks of oak, which were fixed in their place by long wooden pins driven through holes at each end. From the photograph the wood appears to have been well preserved, but having been covered up again shortly after the excavation was made, I can give no further details of its condition. In the same place was discovered a sort of raft or flat-bottomed boat, 4o feet long and 6 feet wide, which was also covered up again. From the illustration given, this seems to have been made of five logs placed side by side, and held together by cross ties passing through holes in projections on the upper side of the logs.
In the foundations of Winchester Cathedral, oak piles had been used to form a solid foundation in the wet peaty soil on which part of the structure rested. When the Cathedral was under restoration in 1906, samples of these piles sent me by Mr. Jackson, the architect of the work, who said that they were put down in the time of William Rufus, were in places decayed. Some logs of beech laid horizontally under the same building, which Mr. Jackson attributes to Bishop de Lucy, about a.d. 1206, remained comparatively sound, and, though the wood has changed from its natural colour to a grey, is fit to use as boards for bookbinding.
With regard to the foundations of the Campanile at Venice, it has been stated that they were laid on larch piles, which are still used in that city for the same purpose; but when I was at Venice in 1905 I inquired into this, and was given a section of an oak pile only about 6 inches in diameter, but perfectly sound and very hard, which was cut from one of the piles taken from the foundation of the Campanile after it fell. (H.J.E.)
Plate 78.
QUERCUS
Plate 79.
QUERCUS PEDUNCULATA, SESSILIFLORA, AND LANUGINOSA
* ↑ The Oak, by H. Marshall Ward, F.R.S. (1892).
* ↑ Brenner, Flora (1902), Band 90, p. 122.
* ↑ Petzold, Deutschen Reichsanzeiger, quoted in Gard. Chron. v. 51 (1876). See also Gard. Chron. xix. 179, fig. 26 (1883), where Mr. Wissenbach states that the oldest and finest specimens in Germany occur in the royal park at Wilhelmshöhe near Cassel, the best measuring 100 feet high and 8 feet 6 inches in girth. It is 100 years old, being a graft of the original tree in the forest near Babenhausen. An earlier account of the latter tree is given by a correspondent in Gard. Chron. 1842, p. 36.
* ↑ A group of fine trees of this variety, said to be more than 100 feet in height, is reported to be growing in the park of Verdais in Haute Garonne. Woods and Forests, 105 (1884).
* ↑ Woods and Forests, 794 (1884), with a full-page engraving of the tree, which was reported to be 72 feet high and 8½ feet in girth.
* ↑ Loudon, Gard. Mag. 1837, p. 10.
* ↑ For interesting accounts of this variety, the following papers may be consulted:—Gilardoni, Le chêne de juin (1875); Jolyet, Bull. de la Soc. des Sciences, 1899.
* ↑ But seedlings raised by Elwes at Colesborne from acorns sent from France by M.L. Pardé do not seem to retain the late-leafing habit.
* ↑ Mathey, Exploitation Commerciale des Bois, 95 (1906), speaks of its timber as being excellent, with very little sapwood, and scarcely any defects.
* ↑ Figured in Plate 79, fig. 2.
* ↑ Bull. of the Torrey Bot. Club, ix. 55 (1882).
* ↑ Laubholz-Benennung, 78 (1903).
* ↑ Elwes has received seedlings of both these forms from Herr Sprenger of Naples, and has sent some of them to Kew; but they do not at present show any appreciable difference, which was the case also in the oaks which he saw growing in the Sila mountains in Calabria.
* ↑ Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin. i. 65, tt. 4, § (1841).
* ↑ Trans. Scot. Arbor. Soc. xiii. 21 (1891).
* ↑ Sir Herbert Maxwell remarks, in litt., that though visitations of Tortrix are not common in Scotland, yet in June 1905 the oaks on the shore of Loch Awe and Loch Lomond, which are sessile, were stripped of their leaves by this pest.
* ↑ Usually Q. pedunculata is the first to come into leaf. Cf. p. 292.
* ↑ Gard. Chron. xxxvii 132 (1905).
* ↑ Cf. Sir Herbert Maxwell's account in Gard. Chron. xxxvii. 82 (1905).
* ↑ Laubholz-Benennung, 77 (1903).
* ↑ Zabel, loc. cit. 79.
* ↑ Ibid. 77. It is Quercus aurea, Wierzbicki, of Kotschy, Eichen, t. 4 (1862).
* ↑ Quercus dschorochensis, C. Koch in Linnæa, xxii. 328 (1849); Quercus sessiliflora, var. dschorochensis, DC. Prod. xvi. 2, p. 9 (1864).
* ↑ According to Schneider, Laubholzkunde, 194 (1904), the plant so named by Steven in Bull. Soc. Nat. Mosc. 1857, i. 387, is either a form of Q. macranthera or a hybrid of that species. The plant, however, usually cultivated as Hartwissiana is probably a variety of Q. lanuginosa, which Steven collected and described as Q. crispata (Bull. Soc. Nat. Mosc. 1857, i. 386).
* ↑ Mr. Steuart Fothringham of Murthly confirms this by leaves from the large oak behind the Birnam Hotel at Dunkeld, which Hunter says is one of the few survivors of the Great Birnam Wood.
* ↑ Cairngorm Club Journal, iv. 111 (1903).
* ↑ Zoologist, 1891, p. 19.
* ↑ C. Reid, Origin of the British Flora, 145 (1899).
* ↑ Fenland, Past and Present, chap. xv. (1878).
* ↑ Die Forstlichen Verhältnisse der Baltischen Provinzen, 1903.
* ↑ I saw a large oak on the lawn at Marks Hall, Essex, which produced no less than 31½ bushels of acorns in 1906.
* ↑ Mr. T.P. Price, of Marks Hall, told me that in 1904 ten bullocks died there from this cause.
* ↑ Hayes states, Planting, 160 (1794), that from long observation he can aver that the root of an oak never produces a growth of finer young wood than when the tree is felled about the first week in June, when the sap is flowing most freely, and refers to Marshall's Minutes of Agriculture and Planting in the Midland Shires of England for evidence in support of this opinion.
* ↑ On revisiting the place seven years later I found that the growth had not been so good as it promised to be, owing perhaps to the underwood being cut too hard, and the soil having become overgrown with grass.
* ↑ Mr. Baylis sends me a very interesting photograph showing the difference between the roots of transplanted and untransplanted oaks.
* ↑ Phil. Trans. 1797, pp. 128–152.
* ↑ Mr. Howard says that in the lower part of the Goose Green enclosure, and in the Straights, there is much better timber, and that in Dr. Schlich's report on these woods over 300 acres were classified as good, where the trees attain a mean height of 60 feet.
* ↑ Transactions of the Surveyors' Institution, 1873–74, vol. vi.
* ↑ Sir Hugh Beevor in 1902 measured eleven of the oaks remaining in this grove, which was nearly all felled in 1885, and found that they averaged 80 to 90 feet high by 8 feet 2 inches in girth at 6 feet, the cubic contents being about 145 feet each.
* ↑ British Timber Trees, 42 (1862).
* ↑ Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin. xxii. 396.
* ↑ Les vieux arbres de la Normandie, iii. 373 (1895).
* ↑ The photographs from which these plates are reproduced were taken in June 1904 by Mr. R.G. Foster of Burford.
* ↑ This plate is from a photograph taken in 1906 by Lord Powis.
* ↑ Vale, Hereford, 1837.
* ↑ Trans. of the English Arboricultural Society, v. 473.
* ↑ One of these measures no less than 44 feet round the base, and at five feet from the ground is 20 feet in girth.
* ↑ The Rev. Mr. Hancock, who is a connection of the Trevelyans of Nettlecombe, says that he has always heard that they were planted about 1600, when part of the existing house was built.
* ↑ Gard. Chron. xvi. 230 (1881).
* ↑ History of Windsor Great Park and Windsor Forest.
* ↑ Op. cit. 7.
* ↑ Arthur Standish, The Common Good.
* ↑ In 1906 I saw this tree again, and found that a large fungus had attacked its trunk, and that some of the branches were showing signs of decay at the ends. Steps are being taken to preserve it as far as possible.
* ↑ A description of some of the finest trees at this place is given in Trans. Scottish Arb. Soc. xiii. 83.
* ↑ Sir Hugh Beevor measured fifteen oaks standing on one acre ina grove planted at Althorp in 1561–1568, and found them from 100 to 115 feet high, with an average girth of 11 feet 8 inches, and the average cubic contents of the first length of 54 feet was 330 feet. In another plantation, made in 1589 on stiffer soil than the last, there were more trees per acre, but their size was less, the average being go feet by 9 feet 7 inches.
* ↑ Essex Naturalist, June 1904.
* ↑ Trans. Scot. Arb. Soc. xii. 313 (1889).
* ↑ Compare Plot's account of a similar case quoted on p. 318 supra.
* ↑ Loudon, loc. cit. 1757.
* ↑ Sir Herbert Maxwell thinks that this is not owing to soil or climate, but to the fact that Scotland was denuded of trees before the seventeenth century. Planting was carried on slowly and sporadically after the Union, and there are few planted oaks in Scotland over 200 years old.
* ↑ Trans. Highl. and Agric. Soc. Scot. xiii, 218 (1881).
* ↑ Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin. xix. 461 (1892).
* ↑ Trans. Nat. Hist. Soc. Glasg. 4th Sept. 1894.
* ↑ Woods and Forests, Jan. 28, 1885, Suppl. p. iii.
* ↑ Practical Treatise on Planting, iii (1794).
* ↑ Henry visited Bellême in 1906, and does not consider it to be quite as fine a forest as Bercé. The best tree seen, possibly the same as the one measured by Prof. Fisher, was 125 feet total height, 95 feet to the first branch, 10 feet 4 inches in girth, and about 425 cubic feet in volume. On referring to Prof. Fisher as to this measurement, he sends me two photographs given him by M. Granger, then Garde Général at Bellême, representing (1) the Chêne de Brigonnais, which is 37 metres = about 120 feet high; girth at 4 feet 6 inches, 3 metres=9 feet 10 inches; height to the first branch, 23 metres; (2) the Chêne Lorentz, which is 40 metres in height=about 130 feet, girth 4½ metres=about 14¾ feet, and 18 metres long to the point where it divides into two nearly equal stems. It therefore appears that we have in England a few oaks at least as tall, and many larger in bulk than any recorded in France.
* ↑ Near this tree Henry observed an oak bearing misletoe on a branch at 60 feet up.
* ↑ Huffel, Economie Forestière, i. pp. 370, 372 (1904). The capital or volume of wood in the forest is not diminished by its felling, but is steadily increasing slightly all the time, owing to careful management.
* ↑ Sir W. Thiselton Dyer informs me that on the Blue Mountains of Jamaica Sir Daniel Morris found a characteristic English oak.
* ↑ History of Windsor Great Park, p. 8.
* ↑ This is a little lower than any temperature recorded by the Meteorological Office, but the subject of meteorology as affecting trees will be discussed fully later.
* ↑ An article in the Kew Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information, Additional Series, v. 1906, on Oak Galls, by R.A. Rolfe, gives much information on the subject, but is too long to quote. Nearly one hundred different kinds have been described which occur on the roots, buds, leaves, stamens, ovaries, and fruit.
* ↑ Trans. Woolhope Nat. Field Club, 1870, p. 68.
* ↑ Les Vieux arbres de la Normandie, pt. iv. (1905).
* ↑ Sir Herbert Maxwell in Memories of the Months, p. 285, mentions the existence of mistletoe-bearing oaks at Stoulton in Worcestershire, in Sherwood Forest, Windsor Forest, and Richmond Park.
* ↑ By far the best account that I know of is in Laslett's Timber and Timber Trees, of which a new edition, revised by the late Prof. Marshall Ward, was published in 1894.
* ↑ Trans. Hort. Soc. Second Series, i. p. 336 (1835).
* ↑ Trans. Surveyors' Institution, vol. xxxvi. pt. vii.
* ↑ Laslett, ed. 2, p. 96, only says of it, "and even when in a state of decay or in its worst stage of 'foxiness,' the cabinetmaker prizes it for its deep red colour, and works it up in a variety of ways."
* ↑ Mr. Alexander Howard tells me that he has seen a group of young oaks felled in Essex, which were not more than 12 to 18 inches in diameter, all perfectly sound, in which the wood was of a rich brown all through the trunk up to and beyond the first main branch. He purchased near Chelmsford a very fine oak which had no less than five secondary trunks growing out of the butt, all of a very rich brown colour, and a number of younger trees growing near it in the same park also proved to be of the same colour. Thus it seems that though the conditions of the soil have some influence, yet the colour may in some cases be inherited. Mr. Howard has inquired for many years but never heard of a brown oak on the continent, and believes it to be only found in this country. Some woodmen in Essex have thought that the trees which carry their leaves longest in winter produced "red oak," which is the local term for brown oak, but I could get no definite proof of the truth of this idea.
* ↑ English Timber and its Economical Conversion, London, 1904.
* ↑ According to Mr. J.C. Shenstone, Harrison of Redwinter in Essex, who lived in the reign of Henry VIII., was the author of this note. '* Of all oke growing in England the parke oke is the softest, and far more spalt and Prickle than the hedge oke. And of all in Essex, that growing in Bardfield parke is the finest for joiner's craft; for often times have I seene of their workes made of that oke so fine and faire as most of the wanescot that is brought hither out of Danske, for our wanescot 1s not made in England. Yet diverse have assaied to deale with our okes to that end, but not with so good sucesse as they have hoped, because the ab or juice will not so soone be removed and cleane drawne out, which some attribute to want of time in the salt water."
* ↑ A Prehistoric Boat, Stanton and Son, Northampton.
* ↑ Brigg Church and Town. Jackson, Brigg.