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SESSILE OAK

The native oaks of the English lake district and of the shores of Loch Lomond are all of the durmast variety; when opportunity occurs of obtaining seed from these it should not be allowed to slip. Even in the south, durmast oak has proved its superiority to the other. Besides being far the handsomer tree, with richer foliage, it is generally immune from the attacks of that curse of English woodland, the caterpillar of the little moth, Tortrix viridana. "I have seen," says the Hon. Gerald Lascelles, Deputy Surveyor of the New Forest, "I have seen a sessile oak standing out in brilliant foliage when every other oak in the wood around was as bare of leaf as in winter."

Most writers on forestry follow one another in describing durmast oak as suiting dry soils and pedunculate oak as preferring rich and moist soil. That is quite at variance with my observation. If the soil of Surrey, where the native oak is pedunculate, be compared with that of the English lake district and the west generally, where the durmast is indigenous, there can be little question which is the moister. The fact is the durmast, being the more vigorous tree, is able to thrive in a soil too dry and poor to support the pedunculate oak.

One word of counsel to planters on soil tending to dryness—never plant oak forest pure, but let beech be mixed with the oaks. The importance of this is well known to German foresters, who call beech the doctor of the forest. Its dense foliage prevents undue evaporation under parching winds and scorching sun, and its heavy leaf-fall in autumn creates the best kind of forest soil.

No clearer example can be given of the failure of ancient oaks, not from extreme age, but from the parching of the soil, than is presented in Sherwood Forest. The giant trunks that stand there singly or in scattered groups once supported a far loftier dome of foliage than they do now. The branches have died back through the vigour of the tree being sapped by excessive evaporation from the ground, consequent on the loss of forest canopy and undergrowth. Within Lord Manvers's park of Thoresby, formed long ago by enclosing part of the Forest, oaks of the same age as those outside stand in close company with the fostering beech, and clothed with dense foliage to the very end of the branches. How often has one heard a forester, when a great oak goes "stag-headed," explain this as the result of the roots getting down to unsuitable subsoil; whereas the true reason is that an oak cannot fulfil his allotted span of years except when grown in close company of other trees.

As might be expected, the oak, as monarch of the primæval British forest, has contributed names to countless places, both in Celtic and Saxon speech; besides a few in Norman French, whereof Chenies, a parish in Bucks, may serve as an example. The Saxon ac, still current in the north, but supplanted in the south by the broader "oak," is easily detected in such names as Acton, Aikton, Ackworth, Akenham, in England; Aikrig, Aikenhead (sometimes disguised by an intrusive t as Aitkenhead) and Aiket, which is a contraction of the Saxon ac widu, oak-wood. Oakham, Oakford, Oakenshaw, Oakley, etc., speak for themselves. In old Gaelic the oak was daur, in modern Gaelic the genitive dara or darach is used, but in Manx and Welsh it remains dar. Deer, Darroch and Darra are Scottish place-names retaining respectively the old and new form of the word, the latter often appearing in composition, as in Kildarroch, i.e. coill darach, oak-wood. Still commoner is the derivative doire, originally daire (pronounced "derry"), signifying primarily an oak-wood, but later applied to woods in general. Hence the large class of names like Derry, Dirriemore, Derrynabrock, Derrynahinch, etc. St. Columba founded his monastery at a place called Daire-Calgaich in the year 546. Adamnan, writing a hundred years or so later, glossed this name Roboretum Calgachi, Calgach's oak-wood. After this it became Derry-Columkille, the oak-wood of Colum of the Churches, until finally James VI. and I. granted a charter thereof to a London company of traders, and the place became, and remains, known as Londonderry.

The mightiest oak I have seen of late years, at all events the oak which impressed me most forcibly with its mightiness, is one of the pedunculate kind near the mansion-house of Panshanger, Lord Desborough's place in Herts. It is figured in Strutt's Sylva Britannica; when he measured it in 1822 the girth was 19 feet at 3 feet from the ground, and its cubic contents were estimated at 1,000 feet. Elwes measured it in 1905 and found the girth to be 21 feet 4 inches at 5 feet. Following him in 1913, but without being aware of his measurement, I made the girth to be 21 feet 6 inches. This tree, however, is not likely to increase much in girth, unless it grows burrs, for it is stag-headed and past its prime. In this fine park of Panshanger I found two or three other oaks with a circumference of 21 feet, but none so impressive and majestic as the one aforesaid.

"The oak," writes Mr. Elwes, "rarely attains in Scotland the size and vigour so commonly met with in England."[3] To that I make reply—"Give us time!" Scotland, her resources drained by three hundred years of all but incessant war which she had to wage in order to win and maintain her independence, became and remained a byword for poverty among the nations. Almost every shred of her woodland, once so vast, had been consumed before the end of the seventeenth century, so that Dr. Johnson was but drawing his bow a trifle too far when he vowed that in all his Scottish travel he had only seen two trees big enough to hang a man on. Practically no oaks were planted in Scotland until many years after the Union of Parliaments in 1707 had inaugurated an era of peace and security for north country lairds. "Give us time!" I repeat, and we shall produce oaks in Scotland that no English magnate would be ashamed to have in his park. Probably the tallest, if not the bulkiest oak that I have seen north of the Tweed, stands close to the mansion house of Blairdrummond in Perthshire. Elwes made it 118 feet high in 1906, with a girth of 17 feet at 5 feet from the ground and a clean bole of 24 feet.

Irish woodland suffered as disastrously as Scottish from reckless felling, but there can be no doubt about the size and quality of the oaks that grew in Ireland in the past. The roof timbers of Westminster Hall were grown in Shillelagh Forest, Co. Wicklow. These trees, no doubt, were of the sessile-flowered race, but the forest has entirely disappeared; and the great oak-wood at Abbeyleix, in Queen's County, is composed of pedunculate oaks.

Besides our British oak, there are between two and three hundred distinct species of Quercus in the Old and New Worlds, many of which are very beautiful trees, but not one whereof the timber approaches that of Quercus robur in quality. The foreign oak most commonly seen in these islands is the Turkey Oak (Q. cerris, Linn.), a native of southern Europe and Asia Minor, which grows to an immense size; it is invaluable as a shelter for more valuable growths, especially in maritime exposure, but for little else, as its timber, though very heavy, is said to be perishable, and certainly produces an excess of sap wood. "We shall say little," wrote John Evelyn, "of the Cerris or Ægilops, goodly to look on, but for little else."[4]

The ilex, or holm oak (Quercus ilex) is another tree which nobody need think of planting for profit, seeing that it produces timber of little value except for firing; nevertheless, it is one of the most ornamental trees that can be grown. Planted in the open, and given some attention in its youth to keep it to a single leader, it develops into a stately-domed mass of evergreen foliage, quite distinct in character from any other tree that flourishes in the British Isles. It would be sombre, did the leaves not glitter delightfully in sunlight; and in cloudy weather the wind sweeps up their white undersides and sets them all a-twinkle.

Although a native of the Mediterranean region, it adapts itself thoroughly to our climate, being perfectly hardy in all but the coldest parts of our country, and ripening its acorns plentifully in districts near the coast. Indeed, it is doubtful whether in its native region many loftier specimens can be found than one at Rossanagh, in County Wicklow, which, when I saw it in 1905, was 80 feet high. The tallest recorded by Mr. Elwes stands in the garden of the Hotel Hassler at Naples, measuring, in 1910, 90 feet high and 12½ feet in girth.

We commonly follow Roman usage in calling this tree "ilex," nor is it easy to understand why Linnæus appropriated this name for the holly, because Pliny plainly distinguishes between them, writing of the holly as "aquifolium." In English vernacular this oak was known as the holm oak, which is a corruption of hollen oak—i.e. the holly-like oak, because it is evergreen and the leaves of young plants are spined, though not so strongly as those of the holly.

Pliny has a great deal to say about this tree. He tells us that in the Vatican of Rome there was in his day an ilex older than the city, bearing a brazen plate inscribed with Etruscan characters, showing that it had been sacred of old. He also states that at Tivoli there were three holm oaks flourishing which were growing when Tivoli (Tibur) was founded centuries before Rome. Now, considering that Rome was founded about B.C. 750, and Pliny died about A.D. 115, it appears that the traditional age attributed to certain trees in his day was as liberal as it remains in ours. It would not be rash, however, to venerate the splendid ilexes in the grounds of the Villa Pamfili and the Villa Borghese at Rome as lineal descendants of the trees that Pliny loved.

In suitable districts near the sea the ilex is invaluable as shelter. Once established, it stands the roughest buffeting of storms without disfigurement. I am writing these notes within a hundred yards of an ilex at Ardgowan, on the Clyde. It is about 50 feet high, and stands isolated on a bare lawn, exposed to all the fury of tempests that come roaring up the firth, twisting its boughs in the most violent manner. Yet these are so tough as never to be broken, and the tree remains a model of symmetry and grace.

At Holkham, in Norfolk, there is a large grove of ilex, called the Obelisk Wood, the like of which for extent is not to be seen, I think, elsewhere. At Tregothnan, in Cornwall, also an immense number of ilexes have been planted in a long avenue beside the sea. It is remarkable—unique, probably—but it is not an arrangement to be recommended for displaying the peculiar beauty of the trees, which consists in their massive foliage. The branches meet overhead, and as you drive along under them the effect is gloomy.

Very near of kin to the ilex is the cork oak (Q. suber), which grows all through the Spanish Peninsula and the Mediterranean region, except in those parts where limestone or chalk forms the soil. Of all the oak family, this comparatively humble member is of most importance to civilised life, for no efficient substitute has been devised for cork in some of the uses to which it is put. The annual consumption must be enormous; it is wonderful how the supply is maintained. Having no qualities to recommend it to the landscape gardener, the cork oak is only fit for growth in this country as a curiosity, and there only in the eastern and southern English counties. In the midland and northern districts it may exist, but cannot rightly thrive.

Many hybrids have been reared from the ilex. One of the choicest is Turner's oak (Q. Turneri), said to have originated in the Holloway Down Nursery, Essex, in 1795, as a cross between the ilex and the common English oak. It is of moderate stature, not greatly exceeding 50 feet, and is semi-evergreen, retaining its leaves, which are of a bright, rather light green, till February. The Lucombe oak (Q. Lucombeana) is also sub-evergreen, a hybrid between the ilex and the Turkey oak (Q. cerris), but is a much loftier tree than Turner's oak; the foliage inclines in colour to the ilex, but the leaves approach those of the Turkey oak in form, the under surfaces being clothed with white down. This variety was raised about 1765 by William Lucombe, of Exeter.

Another remarkable hybrid, apparently between Q. ilex and Q. cerris, is the Fulham oak, of which the finest example I have seen in Scotland grows on the banks of the Ayr, in the grounds of Auchencruive.

Although these hybrid oaks ripen acorns, they cannot be relied on to produce exact counterparts of their parents, the offspring of cross-bred seeds always tending to revert to one or other type in the cross.

Of the forty-seven North American species of oak enumerated by Sargent, none is to be desired by reason of the quality of its timber, which in every instance is inferior to that of our native species; but three, at least, have proved their value in this country as highly decorative trees, owing to the rich tints of the foliage in autumn. These are the red oak (Q. rubra), the scarlet oak (Q. coccinea) and the pin oak (Q. palustris). These are all trees of great stature, the pin oak having already exceeded 100 feet in height in England, presenting a gorgeous display when its leaves turn scarlet in the fall. In Scotland, however, the summer is not always warm enough to produce these fine colours; in wet, cold seasons the foliage remains green till the early frost blights it into brown.

Among oaks of the Old World, the Hungarian oak (Q. conferta syn. pannonica) and the Algerian oak (Q. mirbeckii) are the most ornamental, and have proved amenable to British conditions. As a curiosity, a sheltered corner may be found for the Japanese Quercus acuta, a small evergreen tree with large laurel-like leaves, quite hardy, but apt to be broken by snow. In the absence of flowers or acorns, it would puzzle anyone to identify this tree as a member of the great clan of oaks.