I found this small Oak growing amongst 4 others, which in turn where growing around a large mature Quercus robur, at the arboretum I work at. http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/3796/photo0029qh7.jpg It's not labelled as its obviously a self-set and the area in which it was growing is just a field with mature Oaks that is slowly being planted up to be the other half of the arboretum. I've looked through all my tree ident books and haven't found anything other than Q.macrocarpa that bears a resemblance, but even that is obviously not it. I spoke to a friend who studies the same course as me at college (Forestry & Arboriculture) and he said it may be something like a cross between Q.robur and Q.cerris. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks and hello (my first post!).
Welcome to the forums! This is Quercus cerris (Turkey Oak), seedlings of the cut-leaf form f. laciniata, which often breeds true. Despite the claim in one popular Flora textbook, there is no evidence of hybrids between Q. cerris and Q. robur; the two species are only distantly related within the genus.
Thanks Michael. I haven't been able to find much info about the Q.cerris f. laciniata online. Is there any links you know of?
Hi 'Darkforest', Your best bet is to go to a decent library and look up in W J Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles (vol.4 p.467). But you seem to have spotted something - for all that it is a fairly common variant of Quercus cerris, quite widely planted in the past (I've seen a fair few in various public parks), there is surprisingly little info to be found on it. Even Bean only has a single sentence on it: Odd, when one thinks how much is written about e.g. cut-leaf variants of Beech. The Tree Register of the British Isles (subscription only website) records the largest specimens of it as 25m tall and 119cm trunk diameter in a park near Edinburgh, and 20m tall and 129cm diameter at Kew.
That's a bit of a bummer, but at least I know what it is now! I've got all the volumes of Trees and Shrubs Hardy... at work so I'll flick to page 467 to show the other gardeners. I see your Old-Norse is pretty good too! Thanks for the ident Michael.
Ooops! Just noticed a typo - that should be Vol 3 page 467 (not vol. 4!). Half Viking ancestry . . . jeg kan se at det er den samme som mørk skov i Dansk ;-)