This village was made by digging peat, and the oak is about as old as the village. Erica began around 1863 as a buckwheat colony on the higher sandy ground, the kind of marginal settlement people started where nothing better was available. It became a proper peat colony when the Hoogeveense Vaart, the canal, was completed in the same period, and the centre of the place shifted to sit on the water. The address of this tree still says it: Verlengde Vaart Zuidzijde, the south side of the extended canal. Peat colonies were built to strip the ground. Men cut the bog, dried it, and sent it out by barge, and when the peat was gone what was left was thin sand and a grid of canals. Almost nothing planted in that first generation survived, because there was no reason to keep it. This oak was planted between 1870 and 1880 in a front garden, which is exactly why it did. A tree in somebody's own garden had a defender. It is a private front garden on a canal bank. Look from the road.
In fruit
September to October: acorns drop, and a good mast year buries the ground in them
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Front garden, Verlengde Vaart Zuidzijde 69, EricaA large oak in a front garden on the south bank of the canal, at number 69.
Stands in a front garden on the canal side, recorded as visitable in the national register. Look from the public road.
About 10 km southwest of Emmen, at Erica on the Verlengde Vaart Zuidzijde.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
- In the official register: Landelijk Register Monumentale Bomen (Bomenstichting), no. 1682321
- monumentalebomen.nl
- services-eu1.arcgis.com