The Second Oak of Rue De Laune

This oak stands fifteen metres from the tree the newspapers call the park's oldest, and nobody has put a number on its own years. The city's inventory gives it 110 centimetres of diameter at breast height, second largest of the five red oaks registered along this stretch of Rue De Laune; Quebec publishes the measurement across the trunk, which converts to roughly 3.46 metres round. The printed age claim for this corner of the park names a single tree, so there is no year to give for this one, and none is invented here. What it offers instead is the pair: two heavy red oaks close enough that you can stand between them, inside the ring road that circles the field of the 1759 battle. Chene rouge is a slow provider. Its acorns take two full summers to ripen rather than one, so in any given autumn the crown carries both this year's small green pins and last year's finished nuts, and a good year buries the grass beneath it. The Commission des champs de bataille nationaux keeps the whole park open from dawn to dusk with no gate and no ticket, and this stop costs about twenty seconds off the walk to its neighbour.