The Kew Gardens Red Oak

Toronto has an official tree, and this is it. The city gave the title in 2022 to a northern red oak in Kew Gardens, a trunk 5.3 metres round under a crown reaching about 36 metres, with one long limb that sags all the way down to the grass. Arborists read its start off a diameter of 169 centimetres and put it at roughly 220 years, with a band running from about 200 to 260. Nobody has cored it, so that band is the honest answer: it may or may not predate the founding of the town that became Toronto. Everything else on this corner arrived afterwards. Joseph Williams farmed the land from the 1850s and ran amusement grounds beneath these branches; the city bought the 8.4 hectares in 1907. The creeks that once ran down to the lake here were culverted while the oak stood over them. Forests Ontario designated it a heritage tree in 2021, and a Heritage Toronto plaque went up in May 2023, which is late recognition for something that was already large when the first houses in the Beaches were built. A native plant garden now grows under the low limb. Stand beside it and the limb is at shoulder height, which is not how most people expect to meet a 36 metre tree.