The Holm Oak of Fota

This is the oldest tree the national heritage survey found at Fota, banded to 200 to 300 years, which would put its planting close to when the arboretum's grounds were still ordinary farmland, decades before the Smith-Barry family began building their tree collection here in the 1820s. Holm oak is a Mediterranean evergreen, dark and dense-leaved, holly-like enough at a glance that its name and the English word holly share the same root. It tolerates salt spray and coastal wind better than almost any other oak, which is exactly the pressure Fota Island sits under in Cork Harbour, and that tolerance is likely the plain reason it has outlasted collection trees planted a century after it. The survey also noted fungal growth on this specimen, unremarkable in itself: a two or three hundred year old tree carries decades of dead wood inside it, and fungi feeding on that wood are part of how a veteran tree ages rather than a sign it is failing. The register is the only source that has looked at it closely. If you know its actual planting date, tell us.