The Silky Oak

Most grevilleas are shrubs you can see over the top of. This one is 32 metres tall. Silky oak is the largest of Australia's grevilleas, and it is not an oak at all. It sits in the protea family beside the banksias, and it took its name from the timber, which cuts with a fine silky figure that cabinetmakers chased for a century. This tree stands in the north east part of the City Botanic Gardens, between the pond and the Morning Star sculpture, its trunk 0.7 metres through and a little over two metres around. In spring it does at 32 metres what the rest of the genus does at knee height: dense one sided combs of orange flower held out along the branches, until the whole crown changes colour. The National Trust of Australia put it at roughly a hundred years old when it was measured in February 2014, an approximation rather than a ring count, which places it somewhere near 110 now. That makes it a seedling around the time of the First World War, and the gardens around it have twice gone under the river since, in 1974 and again in 2011. One record carries this tree, the Trust's significant tree register, and its last inspection is that 2014 one, which found it in good condition. We found no second source naming it. If you know more, tell us.