The Bundle-planted Sessile Oak, Bishops Knoll

This oak may be six trees pretending to be one. The Woodland Trust thinks it was planted as a bundle, six or so young oaks set in a single hole, which over the centuries fused into one trunk. That would explain why it is so portly, seven metres round. The Bristol Tree Forum agrees it may have been a bundle planting, noting that its several stems do not appear to grow from an old pollard cut, the other usual reason an oak ends up with many trunks. How old it is depends on whom you ask. The Woodland Trust, which owns the wood, says it could be as much as 600 years old and probably dates from the medieval deer park that once covered this ground. The Forum puts it at 700. Both are estimates from the size of a tree whose size may be the work of six. Either way it was growing here centuries before The Knoll, the Victorian mansion whose grounds became this wood, and long before the Monterey cypress a short walk away. The two sources also disagree on how easy it is to spot. The Trust describes it looming through apple and other fruit trees as the first thing to catch the eye when you come in from Bramble Lane. The Forum says it is disguised by young ash trees and not easy to find. Look near the entrance, among the fruit trees, for a broad oak made of several fused stems.