San Francisco Landmark Tree No. 15 grows in the middle of a street.
Cork Oak
Quercus suber
A working cork oak gets stripped to the bare wood every nine years or so, its bark peeled off in slabs for wine corks and flooring. We map 9 of them, in 9 cities.
The Whistler at Aguas de Moura in Portugal has been harvested more than twenty times since around 1820; a single stripping in 1991 gave more than 1,200 kilos, and in 2018 it won European Tree of the Year. The ones in gardens were never harvested, so they carry what the industry takes away: an outer bark up to thirty centimetres thick, spongy enough that pressing a thumb into it is half the reason to go. Sintra's is the Sobreira dos Fetos, the Fern Cork Oak, because ferns grow straight out of its bark; Portugal's register puts it at 350 years. The oak in Rome's orangery was measured twice in three years and grew from 5.00 metres around to 5.30 in between.
San Francisco
Rome
This cork oak has been measured twice in three years, and it grew in the interval: 5.00 meters around in October 2021, 5.30 meters by January 2024, still adding girth at an age Italy's national mon...
Sintra
Ferns grow straight out of this oak's bark, which is where its name comes from: Sobreira dos Fetos, the Fern Cork Oak.
Florence
Every commercial cork oak in Portugal and Spain gets stripped bare every nine years or so, its bark peeled for wine corks and flooring while the tree survives underneath, scarred orange until it he...
Photo: Peter Andersen, iNaturalist (CC BY 4.0)
Braga
The parish spent about six years asking before this cork oak was protected.
Caserta
This is the one tree on the walk you can put a hand on and be surprised.
Bucaco
Portugal's national tree gets one entry in a forest built to show off everything else.
Aguas de Moura
A single stripping of this tree in 1991 produced more than 1,200 kilos of cork, reportedly enough to stopper over 100,000 bottles of wine.
Photo: UNAC (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Ghisonaccia
Two people out picking wild asparagus found this tree in 2017.
Photo: Pierre Huchette (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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