The Holm Oak of Darling Gardens

Darling Gardens has two trees on the National Trust's register. This is the other one. The Trust names a holm oak of regional significance alongside the elm, and it is much the smaller of the pair: 84 centimetres of diameter at breast height in the City of Yarra's survey, roughly 2.64 metres of girth once converted from the width across the trunk that the register publishes, against the elm's 4.84. It stands 16 metres tall about ninety metres from the elm, nearer the middle of the park than the Gold Street corner. Size is plainly not why it is listed. Quercus ilex is the evergreen oak of the Mediterranean, dark, leathery and dense enough that little grows under it, and it holds its canopy through the entire year. In a Melbourne February that is the difference between shade and no shade, and in July, when the elms around it are bare, it is still in full leaf. Spain and Portugal have grazed pigs on the acorns of this species for centuries, which is the other reason it travelled as far as it did. The age on file is the register's blunt band, over a hundred years at the 2012 survey, with no year and no independent date behind it. If you know when Darling Gardens' oak went in, tell us.