The Swamp White Oak of the North Lookout

Nobody thought this species grew here. The Friends of the Central Experimental Farm put it plainly on their CelebriTrees tour: the swamp white oak was not believed to be native to the Ottawa region until a few very mature trees turned up not far from the city, old enough to settle the question by standing there. The National Capital Commission's register tags it for rarity and vulnerability. It says the Canadian population of swamp white oak is only a tiny fraction of the bur oak's, and that logging pressure pushed both species down. Ottawa has a bur oak on this map as well, on Queen Elizabeth Driveway, which makes the comparison something you can do in one afternoon: the common survivor and the one that almost slipped past the botanists. This oak stands about 90 metres north of the North Lookout, near the old conifer windbreak, in the wooded ground of the Dominion Arboretum. The register gives it a species, a coordinate and a rarity tag, and stops there. No age, no planting date, no girth, from either source. If somebody has put a tape around this trunk, we would like the number. Check which lookout you are at before you start counting oaks. There is a second swamp white oak in the Arboretum, near the South Lookout.