The American Oak of Kleverlaan

Come in through the Kleverlaan gate and the first thing you meet is an avenue of wingnuts. This American oak stands one connecting path to the left of it, which is exactly where the register tells you to look. Quercus rubra is not a Dutch tree. It came from the eastern seaboard of North America and Dutch parks and cemeteries planted it widely from the nineteenth century onward, largely for what it does in autumn. Native oaks go brown and hang on to the leaf half the winter. This one goes deep red in late October and lets go. The register dates its planting to between 1900 and 1910, making it roughly 115 to 125 years old, which is young for a monumental tree and respectable for a red oak in a Dutch cemetery. It has stood beside the gate for more than a century of funerals. The cemetery is one of three stops on the Bomenstichting's monumental tree walk through Haarlem, and this oak is one of the reasons the route comes here, though the national register is still the only source that records the tree itself. Take the dates as the register's rather than as a measurement. Its leaves are the easy check: broad, with shallow lobes ending in fine bristle points, and far bigger than anything a native oak produces.