The Finer Holm Oak of Edinburgh Gardens

Edinburgh Gardens has two holm oaks, and the National Trust of Australia has a view about which one to look at. Its Significant Tree Register calls this the finer of the two examples of the species in the gardens, and it is certainly the heavier: the City of Yarra records 177 centimetres of diameter at breast height, which is about 5.56 metres of girth, since that 177 is a width across the trunk and not a measurement around it. That is the thickest trunk here and a record nowhere else: the Trust's own significance statement points to a tree at Talindert, near Camperdown in western Victoria, as the biggest of its kind in Victoria. This one is about 20 metres tall and stands near the bowling club. The same Trust survey, in 2011, recorded its condition as poor and noted that it is overcrowded by nearby elms. Those elms are worth knowing about. Dutch elm disease never reached Australia, and Edinburgh Gardens holds one of the most significant stands of mature elms left in the world, trees of a size Britain and Europe stopped having half a century ago. The oak has been growing up inside all of that. Its age is the register's band, over a hundred years at the 2012 survey, with no planting year on record.