The Cambridge Oak

Most oaks on this site are one of a small handful of well-known species. The Cambridge Oak is not: it is a hybrid, most likely a cross between the evergreen Quercus rugosa, native to Mexico and the southwestern United States, and Britain's own native Pedunculate Oak, a pairing that should not naturally occur an ocean apart and that appears to exist, in this precise combination, only here. It came from the Worcester nursery of Messrs Smith sometime between 1873 and 1875 and was planted in Cambridge University Botanic Garden soon after. By 1910, the tree had already earned a place in Elwes and Henry's authoritative survey The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland, which singled it out as the finest specimen of its kind in the entire country, a claim about a tree that may have been, functionally, one of a kind to begin with. It has grown considerably since, from under 12 metres tall in 1910 to nearly 17 metres with a 19.5 metre crown spread by a 2005 measurement, though a butt-decaying fungus now regularly fruits on its trunk each autumn, a visible sign of age and decline rather than imminent death. The garden has already grafted a younger replacement, planted near the Terrace Garden in 1991, as insurance for whenever the original eventually goes.