Bur oak is built to survive what kills other trees. The bark is thick and corky, the roots go deep, and the species tolerates the compacted, salted, drought-prone ground that a city road hands a tree. The National Capital Commission's register credits exactly that toughness for the size of this one, and calls it one of the most admired trees along Queen Elizabeth Driveway. What the register does not give is a date. The sycamore and the coffee-tree a few hundred metres back are both tied to the Ottawa Improvement Commission's planting campaign of 1899 to 1904. This oak is tied to nothing, and lending it that date would be a guess wearing a fact's clothes. Open grown bur oaks in Canada can reach around two centuries, so the honest answer is that this one is somewhere under that and nobody has said where. If you know when it went in, or you have had a tape around the trunk, tell us and we will put the number on the page. Find an acorn on the ground and you have the name. The cup is fringed with a shaggy burr and can swallow most of the nut. The species is native to this part of the Ottawa valley, which is not true of the sycamore or the coffee-tree up the path. This is the local tree, and it is the one people stop for.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
Queen Elizabeth Driveway, along the Rideau Canal pathway
You can recognise it by the acorn cup, fringed with a shaggy burr that wraps most of the nut, and by deeply corky bark. It stands on the canal pathway where Queen Elizabeth Driveway runs down towards Fifth Avenue.
About a 20 minute walk south along the canal pathway from Confederation Park, near where Queen Elizabeth Driveway approaches Fifth Avenue/Dow's Lake; roughly 350 metres past the coffee-tree (ott_010).
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
- In the official register: National Capital Commission
- National Capital Commission (NCC), 'A Living Legacy: Remarkable Trees of Canada's Capital' (objectid 120, NCC 'A Living Legacy')
- songonline.ca