Log in

Editor's Picks

Michael Eason hiking in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park to observe Washingtonia filifera in situ
Currently at San Antonio Botanic Garden, Michael's work has...
Amy Byrne | Feb 15, 2023
photo_2.jpg
An exhibition that beautifully depicts and locates oaks
Roderick Cameron | Feb 09, 2023
Burke Oak Collection at New York Botanical Garden
The Coleman and Susan Burke Oak Collection at The New York...
Todd Forrest | Feb 08, 2023

Plant Focus

Quercus xjackiana acorns
The hybrid of Q. alba and Q. bicolor

Roderick Cameron's blog

Oaks in Dante's Divine Comedy

Over the first hundred days of 2018 I have read Dante’s Divine Comedy, as part of a mass-reading organized on Twitter by Pablo Maurette, an Argentine Literature Professor and author at the University of Chicago. Thousands of readers spread across the globe read one canto per day of the classic poem, and exchanged comments and engaged in debates under the hashtag #Dante2018. Oaks are not absent...

Re-Oaking Silicon Valley

Allan Taylor sent me a link to an article describing efforts to bring back the oaks to Silicon Valley.

Quercus humboldtii in Bogotá

Quercus humboldtii in Bogotá

I spent a weekend in Bogotá in October 2017 and made it my mission to find Quercus humboldtii. I had had the species in my sights for a long time: it is the only oak native to South America, and so the closest non-cultivated oak to my residence in Montevideo, Uruguay (a mere 4,700 km as the crow flies—though it might take a relay of crows to make the trip!).

Garry Oak in a Common Garden

In August 2017, during a visit to Vancouver, British Columbia, I was able to visit an experimental plantation of Garry oak (Quercus garryana) at the University of British Columbia. 

Quercus in Quijote

On the advice of a novelist friend of mine, I have been reading Cervantes' Don Quijote. It was recommended for its literary merit ("Flaubert knew the novel by heart before he learnt to read," my friend told me), but in Chapter XI I came across a passage that appealed more to the quercophile than to the bibliophile. 

Swamp White Oaks at the 911 Memorial in New York

In October 2016 I was in New York on business and one morning before work I took the subway down to the Financial District to visit the 911 Memorial. I had avoided the site on previous trips, as it was a place that brought back bleak memories. My family and I were living in New York on Sep 11, 2001, and I was only a few miles away in Midtown Manhattan when the attack occurred. I spent the rest of the day walking north for over four hours to our home in Riverdale in the Bronx, with the appalling column of dun smoke at my back.

Oaks to Commemorate the Battle of Verdun

The Woodland Trust is looking for oak trees that were grown in England from acorns gathered at Verdun when the battle ended. The plan is to collect acorns from these trees and grow a second generation of “Verdun oaks” that will be planted at a centenary wood in Surrey, England.

Update on the Valonia Oak Restoration Project

Students from Winters Flat Primary School and garden specialist Terry Willis plant a Quercus macrolepis subsp. ithaburensis seedling

Peter Marshall reports on the project to restore an old plantation of Valonia Oaks in Australia.

Catalog of Oaks at Grigadale Arboretum Published Online

Grigadale Arboretum in Argentina has taken a first step in making the species list of its oaks available online.

New Old Oaks Found in England

A 900-year old oak tree doesn’t sound like the sort of thing you could keep hidden for any length of time (let alone centuries), but it seems that the English have pulled off the trick.

Pages