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...
Cork Oak
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. This page maps every cork oak on the site, 6 so far across 6 cities.
None of these five has ever been harvested, so they carry the thing 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. Caserta's is the one tree on that walk you can put a hand on and be surprised by. The oak in Rome's orangery has been measured twice in three years and grew in the interval, from 5.00 metres around in 2021 to 5.30. Sintra's is called 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 other two stand in Florence and in the Bucaco forest.
Rome
Florence
Photo: Peter Andersen, iNaturalist (CC BY 4.0)
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...
Sintra
Ferns grow straight out of this oak's bark, which is where its name comes from: Sobreira dos Fetos, the Fern Cork Oak.
Caserta
This is the one tree on the walk you can put a hand on and be surprised.
Braga
The parish spent about six years asking before this cork oak was protected.
Bucaco
Portugal's national tree gets one entry in a forest built to show off everything else.
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