Chêne de la Forestry Commission

Somebody in this French state forest named an oak after the British Forestry Commission. Three of its neighbours carry the names of the University of Oxford, the University of Aberdeen and a world forestry congress, all four standing in the same grove: the série artistique de la Gautrie, a stand set aside for how it looks rather than for what it would cut into. The grove's age is argued over in general terms: France's national forest office describes the artistic series as oaks and beeches of around 350 years, designated for their beauty in the reign of Louis XIV, while a local survey of the same four named trees puts the série at 200 to 300. This particular oak carries better evidence than that spread suggests. ONF's own on-site interpretive panel, photographed and dated 2010, gives this specific tree 360 years as measured in 2006, a girth of 3.83 metres at chest height and a total height of 43 metres, roughly 380 years today. The character of the place is not in doubt either way. Gautrie is a cathedral stand: sessile oak grown tall and clean, which is the shape foresters travel to see and presumably the reason these dedications landed here at all. The GR22 long distance path crosses the forest, and the 10.5 kilometre loop the Perche signs as Les vieux arbres, the old trees, comes through the grove by way of the Carrefour Degraine. Our pin is that crossroads rather than the trunk.