Leaves with four or five deep rounded lobes on almost no stalk, with two small ear-like flaps clasping the twig
English oak — Quercus robur, the pedunculate species.
Nature · Trees
English oak
Deciduous · to 20–40 m · often 500+ years
Quercus robur — Fagaceae
The pedunculate or English oak is the broadleaf most people picture when they think of a British tree: a broad, heavy-limbed giant of parkland, hedgerow and lowland wood. Its leaves are deeply lobed and almost stalkless, while its acorns hang on long stalks — exactly the reverse of the sessile oak. The Woodland Trust reckons oaks in the UK support more than 2,300 associated species, more than any other native tree.
How to know it
How to spot them
- ▸Leaves about 10 cm long with 4–5 deep rounded lobes, no real leaf stalk, and two small ear-like auricles clasping the twig
- ▸Acorns in ones to threes on a long stalk — the peduncle that gives the tree its other name
- ▸Clusters of blunt buds at the tip of each twig; bark deeply fissured and greyish-brown
- ▸Marble galls and knopper galls, both grown by tiny gall wasps, are common on its twigs and acorns
How to know it
Fruit borne in ones to threes on a long stalk while the leaves have none — the exact reverse of its closest British relative
English oak. The long peduncle is why it is also called the pedunculate oak.
Bunched blunt buds at the twig tip, deeply ridged grey-brown bark, and a broad crown of heavy twisting limbs
English oak.
Sacred to Zeus, Jupiter and the Celtic Dagda; its bark tanned leather from Roman times and its timber built the Navy's ships of the line
English oak — 'Hearts of Oak'.
Knopper galls deform its fruit and hard brown marble galls stud its twigs, each grown by a tiny wasp
English oak. The knopper gall wasp, Andricus quercuscalicis, reached Britain in the 1960s.
A hollow, scaffolded giant in Sherwood Forest is Britain's most famous individual of this species
English oak — the Major Oak.
Its specific epithet is the Latin word for strength or hardwood, and gives us 'robust'
English oak — Quercus robur.
Quick-fire facts
- •Quercus robur: robur is Latin for 'strength' or 'hardwood', and is the root of English 'robust'
- •Also called the pedunculate oak, from the long peduncle (stalk) of the acorn
- •The Woodland Trust says UK oaks support more than 2,300 species, over 300 of them found on oak and nothing else
- •Britain is thought to hold more ancient oaks than the rest of Europe combined (Woodland Trust)
- •The Major Oak in Sherwood Forest, propped on scaffolding since Victorian times, is the best-known individual tree
- •Oak bark was the standard source of tannin for leather; acorns fed pigs turned out into woods under the right of pannage
- •The knopper gall wasp Andricus quercuscalicis, which deforms acorns, spread through Britain from the 1960s
- •Current threats include acute oak decline and the oak processionary moth, whose caterpillar hairs irritate skin
- •The oak leaf is the emblem of both the National Trust and the Woodland Trust
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Sources
- Woodland Trust — English oak (Quercus robur)