Every register starts somewhere, and Brussels started here.
Turner's Oak
Quercus x turneri
Turner's oak is a garden invention, not a wild species: an English nursery crossed the evergreen Mediterranean holm oak with the northern pedunculate oak in the late eighteenth century, and the hybrid kept the holm oak's leathery leaves through winter, only dropping them in spring when new growth pushes the old ones off. We map 3 of them, in 2 cities.
Amsterdam's, in the Hortus Botanicus, still carries its graft union thirty centimetres above the ground and a disputed planting year, 1865 by the city's own register or 1895 by the Bomenstichting's, thirty years apart on the same tree. Brussels has two, a few minutes' walk apart on the same lawns of Parc d'Egmont: the one entered into the region's tree register in 1999, and a taller, thicker neighbour registered separately nearby. None of the three is old by oak standards. All three are odd enough to be worth the detour.
Brussels
Parc d'Egmont has two Turner's oaks, and the region's own tree atlas has spent years quietly mixing up their measurements.
Amsterdam
This oak does not drop its leaves in autumn.
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