Quercus 1267 



10 ft. with a straight clean bole of 22 ft. This, according to Napper, was the 

 original var. suberosa of Loudon. It was cut down the year afterwards, when the 

 nursery was sold for building, and I bought the log, containing about 80 ft. in the 

 butt only, for £2. It turned out some very sound hard wood, which, when sawn on 

 the quarter, showed a very varied and beautiful figure. A board from this tree, 

 showing the bark, is now in the museum at Kew, and a cabinet which I had made 

 from it is extremely handsome. 



The only other large tree which I know of similar character, and almost certainly 

 of the same origin, grows near the chapel at Killerton, and measures about 60 ft. by 

 8 ft., with a bole 15 ft. long ; its bark is very corky, and it produces acorns much more 

 abundantly than the larger original Lucombe oak at the same place ; its leaves are 

 smaller than those of the latter. I have raised a number of seedlings from this tree 

 which vary a good deal, and are too tender to grow well on my soil, which does not 

 suit either of the parents. 



Another very fine tree which I believe to have been of the same origin, 

 though its leaves resemble rather those of the Fulham oak, grows at Redleaf, 

 near Penshurst, Kent, the seat of Mrs. E. Hills. This tree shows in its bark that 

 the cork oak was one of its parents, and has no visible mark of having been grafted. 

 It measures 86 ft. by 9 ft. 10 in., with a clean bole about 20 ft. long, and is a hand- 

 some and vigorous tree. 



There are numerous seedling forms in cultivation, which vary considerably in 

 their foliage, habit, and in the period which they shed their old leaves. Most of 

 them are of very inferior size to the original tree, and the grafted plants, which are 

 usually sold under the name of Lucombe oaks, are, so far as I have seen, slow 

 growers even in the south-west of England. A good example of this may be seen 

 at Powderham Rectory, the residence of the twelfth Earl of Devon, where an avenue 

 of Lucombe oaks was planted, as he told me, about fifty years ago, which, though 

 they came from Lucombe and Pince's nursery, will never rival their parent trees. 



There are a number of trees at Syon, which appear in the old catalogue under 

 various names, and which resemble the Lucombe or Fulham oak in their leaves 

 and subevergreen character, but which are not typical of either in their habit. 

 These are most probably seedlings from the Fulham Nursery, but one of them 

 grafted on the common oak, is probably a graft from the original Fulham oak, 

 and measures 81 ft. by 9 ft. 4 in. 



The tree does not come true from acorns, as Mr. Napper says that he was in 

 the habit of gathering them, and that they invariably produced what he knew as 

 bastard oaks, more like the Ilex than anything else ; and Lord Ducie, who has raised 

 them, tells me the same thing. I found several pans of seedlings of a so-called 

 Lucombe oak in the St. John's nursery at Worcester in 1902, one of which had 

 made in the first year about 18 in. of growth, but this was not made in one un- 

 interrupted shoot as described in the original, but in two separate periods of growth 

 as usual in the English oak. (H. J. E.) 



