Chêne d'Oxford

The storms of December 1999 took down the tall stand around this oak and left it standing. The waymarked route through the forest names it and one neighbour, the Congrès oak, as the survivors of the grande futaie, the high forest that used to fill this corner of the Gautrie. Everything that made those two remarkable before the storm is still true, and now they are also the last of their cohort. The name came from further off. This is the Chêne d'Oxford, dedicated to the university, one of four oaks in the série artistique de la Gautrie carrying the names of foreign institutions: Oxford, Aberdeen, the British Forestry Commission and a world forestry congress. The grove was set aside for its looks rather than its timber, and France's national forest office traces that designation to the reign of Louis XIV. This tree's own on-site ONF panel, photographed in 2010, is more specific than the série-wide figures: 360 years as measured in 2006, a girth of 3.43 metres and a total height of 43 metres, putting it at roughly 380 years today. It is the easiest of the four to reach. It stands at the Carrefour Degraine itself, which has picnic tables and the forest office's information panels, directly on the 10.5 kilometre Les vieux arbres loop.