The Hungarian Oak of Randenbroek

Most oaks in a Dutch park are the native pedunculate oak. This one is not: it is a Hungarian oak, native to the Balkans and south-eastern Europe, and its leaves give it away immediately, glossier and more deeply cut than any local oak, with lobes that reach almost to the midrib. Quercus frainetto was brought into northern European planting for a practical reason: it tolerates poorer, drier soils than the native oak and still grows into a broad, substantial crown. This one stands on what used to be a car park in the Randenbroek neighbourhood, now a green strip on the Rubensstraat, which says something about how a tree this size can outlast several changes of use for the ground beneath it. The register bands its planting to the 1860s, making it roughly a century and a half old and one of the more unusual species on Amersfoort's register within the town itself. Free, public green strip, no gate, open at all times. There is no single spectacular month. The reason to find this one is simply that it is not the oak you already know, standing in an ordinary residential street rather than a grand park.