The Turner's Oak of the Hortus

This oak does not drop its leaves in autumn. It holds them, dark and leathery, through the whole Dutch winter, and only lets go in spring when new growth physically pushes the old leaves off the twig. Turner's oak is a hybrid raised in an English nursery in the late eighteenth century, a cross between the evergreen holm oak of the Mediterranean and the pedunculate oak of northern Europe, and it took half its habit from each parent. It grows slowly and stops at around ten metres, which for an oak is nothing at all. The acorns hang on long stalks. The graft union is still visible about thirty centimetres above the ground, the seam where a nurseryman joined this tree to somebody else's roots. When that happened is contested. Amsterdam's register of protected trees says 1865; the Bomenstichting guide to the city's monumental trees says 1895. Thirty years apart, the same tree, and neither shows its working, so read the age as somewhere between 130 and 160 years. Either way it stood here for a century before the University of Amsterdam let go of the garden in 1987 and a private foundation took it on, which is why the register lists this tree's owner as a private party rather than the city. January is the month to come, when the rest of the garden is bare and this one is not. Entry needs a Hortus ticket.