Chêne du Xe Congrès Forestier

Nobody agrees which forestry congress this oak commemorates. The waymarked route through the forest calls it the Chêne du XIe Congrès, the eleventh. ONF's own on-site panels, photographed at two of this grove's other three trees, both describe the série in the same wording and both call it the Xème, the tenth; since ONF wrote the panels, that is the name we lead with, though the discrepancy is worth knowing before you look for a number on the ground. What it did is better recorded than what it is called. The December 1999 storms took down the high forest around this corner of the Gautrie, and this oak and the Oxford oak are the two that were left, which is why the route describes them as survivors of the grande futaie. Both belong to the série artistique de la Gautrie, four oaks carrying dedications to foreign institutions in a grove France's national forest office says was set aside for its beauty under Louis XIV. The age is a band rather than a number for this trunk: two neighbours carry their own ONF panels giving 360 years in 2006, roughly 380 today, but no panel for this one has turned up, so read it as 200 to 350 years until somebody photographs its plaque. Both trees stand at the crossroads, with picnic tables and forest office panels, on the 10.5 kilometre Les vieux arbres loop.