The Red Oak of the Hagerhof

It is behind the animal paddock at a children's farm, which is the least dignified address of any tree on this page and probably the best one. The Hagerhof was an estate before it was a kinderboerderij, and this oak is from that earlier life, planted somewhere between 1900 and 1910. Red oak was the standard choice for a country place at that date: American, fast, and reliably the reddest thing in the grounds for two weeks in late October, which native oaks never manage. The leaves are the easy way to tell it apart. Big, with pointed lobes ending in tiny bristles, nothing like the small soft rounded lobes of a Dutch oak. The acorns are squat and broad in a shallow saucer, and they take two years to ripen rather than one. What makes this worth including is the traffic. Most of the trees on this site are visited by adults who came deliberately. This one has small children running past it all day, none of whom are there for the tree, some of whom will remember it anyway. Late October, when it turns.