The Pin Oak of the Oranjepark

A pin oak of this age is unusual in the Netherlands, because the species did not become a standard street and park tree here until well into the twentieth century. One planted between 1860 and 1870 was somebody's deliberate choice rather than a default. It is easy to identify and hard to confuse with the pedunculate oaks around it. The leaves are cut into narrow, sharply bristled lobes with deep rounded bays between them, nothing like the soft rounded lobes of a native oak. The lower branches sweep downward toward the ground while the upper ones point up, which gives an old one a distinctive drooping-skirted outline you can read from across a lawn. Its other habit is holding its dead leaves. Pin oaks often keep a rustling brown canopy through most of the winter and only drop it when the new buds push in spring, so this is a tree that looks occupied in January when everything around it is bare. It stands on the west side of the Oranjepark, opposite the P. Krugerstraat. In late October it turns a deep scarlet that lasts a fortnight.