XLVII.— THE OAK. 
Quercus Robur Linne. 
W HOLE volumes have been written on this tree, which we claim as a national 
emblem. Our navies built of its wood are as closely associated with our later 
history as were our bows of Yew with that of an earlier time ; and the distinctive 
form of its leaves and fruits render it the most familiar of British trees. The 
massive lines of the trunk sweeping upwards from the root are said to have 
suggested to Smeaton the design of his Eddystone Lighthouse ; while the huge 
limbs, spreading out fifty or sixty feet at a right angle to the stem, seem to defy the 
force of gravitation. 
The shoots are generally short and slow-grown, angular with projecting leaf- 
bases, and changing from olive or yellow green to russet and silvery grey. They 
bear short, ovoid, five-sided buds, often of a warm reddish brown, either laterally or 
crowded three or more together at their apex. The frequent suppression of the 
terminal bud gives a characteristically tortuous or zigzag direction to the branching 
of the twigs ; and the arrest of the terminal internodes causes the leaves to 
originate in clusters at the apex of these branches. A pith pentagonal in section, as 
well as the five-sided buds, points to the pentastichous arrangement of the leaves. 
The buds are enclosed in twenty or thirty ciliate scales, which represent stipules, 
arranged in five rows, one at each angle of the bud, while in the centre are spirally- 
arranged conduplicate leaves each with two stipules. The leaves generally make 
their first appearance in the south of England towards the end of April, when the 
young shoots blush with a ruddiness almost autumnal ; whilst a striking characteristic 
of the Oak is the production of fresh young growth, the so-called “ Lammas shoots,” 
late in the summer, especially if the spring foliage has suffered from weather or 
insect attack. 
The leaves are mostly crowded together in tufts of three or more together near 
the apex of the shoot ; and, of the three varieties of our English species, Quercus 
Robur Linne, which have been described as distinct species, one — Q. sessiliflora 
Salisbury — has downy twigs ; petioles from half an inch to an inch in length; leaves 
more or less pubescent beneath and with somewhat triangular sub-acute lobes ; and 
the acorns close together on a very short stalk. Q. intermedia D. Don has both leaf- 
stalks and fruit-stalks short and a hoary stellate down on the under surface of the 
leaves ; whilst Q. pedunculata Ehrhart, the form represented in our Plate, has smooth 
twigs ; sub-sessile glabrous leaves with rounded obtuse lobes and an auriculate base, 
and the acorns scattered on a peduncle from one to six inches long. This last-named 
variety, the Chene blanc of French foresters, is the most abundant form in our 
southern and midland counties, and generally reaches a less height before branching 
than does the Sessile-flowered Oak of the north and west. Q. intermedia D. Don, a 
dark-fruited variety in the New Forest, best, therefore, entitled to the name of 
