The Roehampton Lucombe Oak

This oak belongs to a variety that is barely older than it is. William Lucombe, a nurseryman in Exeter, raised the cross of a cork oak and a Turkey oak around 1763, and the hybrid still carries his name. The Grafting Gardeners guide to London's greatest trees puts this one at about 250 years old, which would make it one of the early generation. The guide also says it was probably planted by Capability Brown, who landscaped the area around 1773. That is the guide's guess, and no record we have found backs it, so read it as a possibility rather than a pedigree. Whoever put it in, it now stands on the green between the housing blocks of the Alton Estate, at the junction of Danebury Avenue and Tangley Grove in Roehampton, and it was chosen as one of the Great Trees of London. Two caveats. Our sources are one chain, the Great Trees list and a guide drawing on it, so the age is a single estimate, somewhere between 200 and 260 years, and nobody has published a girth or height. And the pin comes from the Great Trees list rather than from the trunk, so it is approximate; one unconfirmed account puts the tree just south of Finchdean House. No source describes a gate, but none confirms open access either. If you have stood under it, tell us.