Thirty-eight and a half metres is an extraordinary height for a sessile oak anywhere, and this one is doing it in Catalonia. Quercus petraea is a tree of cool northern hillsides that reaches its southern limit in these mountains, and it gets there by growing in the wet shaded valleys of the Guilleries where the Mediterranean stops and something closer to Atlantic forest begins. This one carries a crown 26.5 metres across on a trunk 4.75 metres round, in the valley at Santa Creu d'Horta above Osor. Catalonia declared it a monumental tree in 1990 and it also sits inside the Guilleries designated natural area, so it has two layers of protection on it. Some 480 metres away stands a Spanish black pine of 29 metres that was declared on the same day, which makes this the only stop around Girona where two protected trees are within a short walk of each other. The register lists both as being in normal condition. Neither has a published age, because Catalonia does not record them.
In fruit
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.
Santa Creu d'Horta, Osor 17161, GironaYou can recognise it by its height, 38.5 metres, extraordinary for a sessile oak, with a crown 26.5 metres across. It stands above Osor, about 480 metres from the great pine.
Free, in the Guilleries designated natural area
Osor, about 21 km southwest of Girona by mountain road, then on foot
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
- In the official register: Arbres monumentals de Catalunya
- mediambient.gencat.cat
- ca.wikipedia.org
