The Russ Pitman Mexican White Oak

This oak is broader than it is tall. The Texas A&M Forest Service put its crown at 19.8 metres across against 18.9 metres of height, taped the trunk at 2.31 metres round, and rated its condition good. It grows in Russ Pitman Park in Bellaire, a separate city sitting inside Houston's West Loop. Both the park's own pages and the City of Bellaire's describe the place by its towering oaks, in the plural, without picking one out. The state registry did pick one out, and this is it: a Mexican white oak, Quercus polymorpha, also known as the Monterrey oak, which is not the species you expect to find carrying a state measurement in a Texas suburb. The park is public and free, open from five in the morning until half past nine at night, with the Nature Discovery Center inside it keeping its own shorter hours. The tree is reachable whenever the park is, which is most of the day. Two gaps worth saying out loud. The registry's tape went round it in May 2020, so the figures above are five years old and read as a floor rather than a reading; nothing we found suggests it has come down or gone into decline. And no age exists for it anywhere, with no growth rate for this species we would trust to derive one from the girth. If you know when it was planted, tell us.