OAKS AT ALDENHAM. 



195 



ones, and to a botanist might be the same thing, but to the man who 

 grows trees for ornament, and such a man represents 99 per cent, 

 of the specimen-tree growers, they are most inferior. So strongly 

 do I feel this that, though I have plenty of Mirbeckii of a sort already, 

 I hope if I live another twelve months to get the Ham Manor type 

 grafted. 



A feature which I have frequently noticed in this species is that 

 in January and February, while the leaves still retain their green colour 

 the leaf-stalk and lower part of the midrib take on a bright red. 



This is not constant, for it has never occurred at Aldenham, where 

 the leaves soon turn quite brown ; but I have seen it in specimens 

 from Surrey, Sussex, and Norfolk, and when it does occur it may 

 serve as a means of identification, for I don't think it happens in 

 the case of any other species. 



Undoubtedly this is an oak which differs extraordinarily in the 

 form and shape of its leaves, and that not merely, as is the case with 

 many plants, when under cultivation, but also in its natural habitat. 



Only last winter Sir John Ross sent me up the leaves of a plant 

 of his which he had bought many years ago under the appellation 

 Q. Zan or Q. Zeen (which last is a French corruption of the Arab name 

 (n'zdn) for this oak, and is a syn. for Mirbeckii), expressing at the 

 same time grave doubts whether they were true to name. Nothing 

 more unlike the broad leaves with regular dentation of a typical 

 Mirbeckii would it be possible to conceive than Sir John Ross's 

 samples; they were long, narrow, and had irregular jagged edges, and 

 in shape and size much more suggested Q. pseudo-Turner i than they 

 did Mirbeckii. I showed them to a well-known practical expert, who 

 declared that whatever else they were they certainly were not Mirbeckii. 

 Since then they have been examined in the Royal Botanic Gardens, 

 Edinburgh, by Mr. Smith, who pronounced them to be an eccentric 

 form of Mirbeckii. 11 Who shall decide when doctors disagree ? " 

 My only reason for inclining to the Edinburgh view is that Sir John's 

 leaves, though retaining the summer green, had turned bright pink 

 or red so far as the base of the midrib and petiole were concerned. 

 This, as I have said before, is a phenomenon, trifling enough perhaps, 

 but to the extent of my knowledge confined exclusively to the species 

 under review. 



The truth is that no expert, however clever, can always be positive 

 about oaks from observation of the leaves alone. " By their fruits 

 ye shall know them " is as true in botany as in morals. For arbori- 

 culturists an admirable modification of the old Latin motto " Fronti 

 nulla fides " would be to read " Frondi " for " Fronti " ! You can 

 with no greater confidence pronounce on people's characters from their 

 faces than you can classify trees into species by their leaves. 



Last year my friend, Mr. Victor Ames, kindly gave me a small 

 plant of Mirbeckii of which the foliage differs so widely from the type 

 that I feel justified in giving it a varietal name and calling it after 

 the donor, who raised it from the acorn in his garden at Thornham, 



