Friends in Sooke, BC have a huge tree in their garden that they have been told is a 300-year-old Scarlet Oak. Assuming this is true, how can it be? Would Spanish explorers have planted it there?
If the party claiming 300 years (making the planting date 1715!) hasn't bored the trunk and counted growth rings - or there are no authentic, reliable planting records on hand dating the tree from a particular time - then they really don't know how old it is. A small tree can be old and a big tree can be young, even within the same species. A scarlet oak acquired by the Seattle arboretum in 1940 was measured over 101' tall about 10 years ago.
are you sure it's not a garry oak? ie the precious native species unique to your part of Canada. (tho common down the west coast of US - it's just that Vanc Isl and a bit of the fraser Valley is the only place it grows in Canada - unique as in like many species in Okanagan (northernmost western "desert" type area)
Scarlet Oak and Gary Oak leaves are so different that it is hard to imagine that someone would mistake one for the other.
When I was told a tree in my friends' garden was a 300-year-old Scarlet Oak, I realized it was extremely unlikely to be both a Scarlet Oak and 300 years old. It is definitely not a Garry Oak. The tree is planted beside a house built in the early 1930s and I believe it was planted then along with other landscape trees and shrubs, now very mature. The main reason that I brought this to the forum is that another friend who is knowledgeable about the early history of this SW BC area brought up the fact?? that Spanish explorers planted 'beacon' poplars in certain strategic places to help with navigation. (Early GPS I guess.) I haven't found anything yet to verify that but we do know they did plant vegetables at Nootka Sound over 200 years ago. She also told me that there is a fig tree growing in Qualicum Beach descended from one the Spanish introduced. Anyway, I thought I'd better keep an open mind about Scarlet Oaks and try to find out if there was any possibility Spanish explorers could have planted one in Sooke to serve as a beacon tree seeing that, like poplars, they're very fast-growing. Thanks to everyone who has weighed in on this puzzle. I now believe that if my friends' tree IS a Scarlet Oak, it is about 80 years old, not 300. PS Here's an interesting website I just came across that summarizes the garden history of the Pacific Northwest: http://www.halcyon.com/tmend/timeline.htm
that's a really interesting timeline history I noticed the link to "Olmstead" and the list of Olmstead related projects in Vancouver BC - British Properties, etc should be on that list I think. re: early explorers - a historian a few years back theorized that DRAKE had ventured further north than the San Francisco area - all the way to Comox. Apparently they over-wintered - I wonder if they put in some crops. Here is the book ----- Author: Bawlf, R. Samuel (2004). The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake: 1577–1580. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-200459-3.
