The Cork Oak of 20th Street
age unknownCork Oakpin approximate
Which one is it? At the top of the stepped hillside garden on 20th Street at Noe, not at the bottom. The bark is deeply corky and spongy to the touch, unlike anything else planted on the block.
San Francisco Landmark Tree No. 15 grows in the middle of a street. Not beside one: 20th Street at Noe is one of this city's stairway streets, a public right-of-way that was never paved as a roadway, and the hillside garden climbing it stands where the road would have gone. The cork oak stands at the top of it, on ground that legally belongs to the street. In October 2025 the neighbourhood association that tends the garden renamed the whole thing after the tree, so it is now the Cork Oak Tree Community Garden. They keep it watered with help from the city's public works and water departments, which is an unusually specific piece of care for a tree nobody owns. Quercus suber is the tree the cork industry is built on, a Mediterranean oak grown in Portugal and Spain for a bark thick enough to be stripped every nine years or so and grow back. Nobody harvests this one. It is evergreen, so there is no season to wait for, and no source we found gives a planting date or a girth, which leaves the age open; if you know when it went in, that is worth a message. The climb up from Noe Street is the price of admission.
The button above opens directions in your maps app. In the Castro/Noe Valley/Dolores Heights hillside; the 24-Divisadero and 33-Ashbury/18th bus lines pass nearby, and it is a walkable hill climb from either Church Street or Castro Street Muni stops.
The pin marks the right spot roughly, not the tree itself. It stands here, but we have not confirmed the precise position on the ground yet. Know exactly where it is?
- Species
- Cork Oak (Quercus suber)
- Age estimate
- Location
- Public right-of-way stairway garden on 20th Street at Noe Street (top of the Cork Oak Tree Community Garden) (Dolores Heights / Eureka Valley)
- Access
- Free, always open. Stands at the top of a public hillside stairway garden in the street's own public right-of-way, tended by the neighbourhood association with city (SFDPW) support; not on private land at any point.
- Getting there
- In the Castro/Noe Valley/Dolores Heights hillside; the 24-Divisadero and 33-Ashbury/18th bus lines pass nearby, and it is a walkable hill climb from either Church Street or Castro Street Muni stops.
Trees nearby
Ticking this one off, walks past several more, and your collection growing city by city: that is the Ancient Trees app.
Get the appThis page was researched from a distance. If you know this tree, you know things we do not: the species, the age, the size, whether the photo shows the right tree, or that it is gone. Every field on this page can be corrected.
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