The Oak of Tombeboeuf

In 2019 France gave its Tree of the Year title to an oak standing on its own in a field. It sits on high ground about eight kilometres outside Tombeboeuf, with no signpost and no path to it, which is why the tourist board publishes a phone number for guidance rather than directions. The two accounts of the tree do not agree. The tourist board puts it at roughly 300 years, 6.30 metres round and 25 metres tall. A specialist tree blog that walked out to it in 2008 called it young at 250 and paid more attention to its shape: the first branches leave the trunk about three metres up and travel sideways rather than up, what an oak does when nothing nearby competes for light. The ARBRES association had already labelled it a Remarkable Tree in 2003. In February 2022 a large fissure opened in the trunk and locals worried it might not survive the weight of a new season's leaves. A restoration campaign followed. Nothing published since names it as lost, and the tourist board's current listing still describes it in the present tense with no mention of ongoing danger, treated here as evidence it came through, short of an explicit all-clear. The field is private agricultural land, and the tourist board's own listing calls it a free, self-guided visit, no booking required. Nobody has settled which oak it is, either. If you can read the leaf, say so.