A little over three months ago (23 May 2024), I was reacquainting myself with a few of my favourite oaks in London. My wife Lynda and I were at the tail end of leading an ASA 'Spring Garden Masterpieces of England and the RHS Chelsea Flower Show' tour, culminating with a morning tour of Kew Gardens by Australian expat, Richard Barley.  I had got to know quite a few of Kew's trees from my time working there in 2011 and 2012, particularly this one which was - if I detoured slightly - on the way from our home near Kew Palace to my office in the Museum opposite the Palm House. It ..read more

Earlier this week, during a lull in the 20th International Botanical Congress - held in a sprawling convention centre on the outskirts of Madrid (IFEMA Madrid) - I took a walk in the nearby Parque Juan Carlos I.  Juan Carlos I was King of Spain from 1975 to 2014, and this 160-hectare park honouring the first decade or so of his reign was opened in 1992. It's a huge and hot piece of land. The day I visited, temperatures were heading into the high thirties (Celsius), and I kept as much as possible to paths shaded by trees. Not that this was an easy task, as you can see in these pictures.&n ..read more

A few years ago, I was asked whether I knew about the Macedon oak. ‘Well, of course’ I said, making a mental note to look it up later. I have to admit, I am still yet to see a living specimen of this famed oak (hence the few images in this post). This illustration from the logo of the famed Mount Macedon & District Horticultural Society was all I knew of the oak before I 'looked it up'. I soon discovered that Quercus ‘Macedon’ (a cultivar of unrecorded species called ‘Macedon’), with barely lobed leaves, was, at least in part, a pin oak (featured in my last post).&nbs ..read more

Pin oak lined road in Glen Iris, July 2024 Today's post features the pin oak (Quercus palustris), a popular street and park tree throughout the world, including the eastern suburb of Melbourne, Glen Iris. Later in the week, I'll tackle a variant of this species - perhaps - from the country retreat of Mount Macedon.  (For my international, and perhaps interstate, readers, Glen Iris and Mount Macedon are roughly the same distance from Melbourne as Richmond and Oxford are, respectively, from central London...)  Despite one of pin oak's alternative common names being ..read more

What a cliff hanger I left you with three weeks ago (as the lads on The Rest is History podcast are wont to say). Not in the Americas, but someone on our planet, I wrote, oaks crossed the equator (southward) without our help.  But before I tell you where, let's start at the top. Literally.  Japanese Blue Oak (Quercus glauca), widespread in continental Asia; Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, February 2024 There are 100 peaks in the Himalaya range rising 7,200 metres or more above sea level, and perhaps not unexpectedly, you won’t find any oaks at those altitudes. Not even ..read more

Flora de la Real Expedición Botánica del Nuevo Reino de Granada (1783–1816), vol. XIV, p. 26 Panama is just about where the southward journey of the oak through the Americas stops. While the closing of the isthmus between North and South America between 3.5 and 5 million years ago allowed oaks into a small area of north-western South America, only one species extends into Colombia.  Which means oaks barely have a toehold in South America, and never cross the equator. They get close, to about one degree of latitude north. After splintering into some 240 species, the oaks of the ..read more

Muller oak, Joshua Tree National Park, California; September 2014 The first naturally growing oak I saw in California was in Joshua Tree National Park, just south of Los Angeles. Not a grand old tree like the ones from eastern USA I’d seen in picture books, but a gnarly shrub fighting for existence alongside succulents and desert ephemerals. Huddled near a stand of the local pine tree, the piñon (Pinus edulis), in the shadow of an ochre-coloured, rocky outcrop.  I'm pretty sure it was a Muller oak (Quercus cornelius-mulleri), with its spiny, leathery leaves, growing the way ..read more

Airt Ben Haddu, Morocco (© ASA)  While Europe has about 36 species of oak (Quercus), most of these grow in the southern countries, particularly around the Mediterranean. The UK and much of the north have only two native species, the English (or Pedunculate) oak (Quercus robur) and the sessile oak (Quercus petraea).  Today, though, I want to drop to the southern side of the Mediterranean, into Africa. Eight oak species growing naturally in northern Africa, with all but one of these found on both the European and African sides of the Mediterranean Sea.    The eight ..read more

Bristle-toothed oak, Kyneton Botanic Gardens, June 2020 A few winters ago, I saw two bristle-toothed oaks (Quercus acutissima) with their rusty brown leaves about to fall in Kyneton and then two days later, in Hawthorn. Like many deciduous oaks, they hold their leaves until early winter.  Bristle-toothed oak, Kyneton Botanic Gardens, June 2020 I've also seen bristle-toothed oaks in green leaf, in Box Hill Gardens and lakeside at Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne. But they are not commonly grown in Australia. Apparently, they are more often planted in North America, where t ..read more

(From left) me, Governor Linda Dessau, Engelmann oak, Tony Howard and Penny Fowler (current Chair of Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne Board), Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, 9 June 2023 Last year, Linda Dessau and Tony Howard planted one near the new City Gate in Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne (on 9 June 2023), to mark the end of the Linda's eight-year term as 29th Governor of Victoria.  A month or so later, I planted one in Oak Lawn (on 14 July 2023) to mark the end of my ten-year term as the thirteenth Director (and Chief Executive) of Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. I include ..read more