Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Another favourite tree

I recently received a request to use one of my pictures of one of my trees as part of a tree planting campaign - pretty sweet to think that trees I planted as 6inch specimens are now big and magnificient enough to be poster boys for tree planting; my legacy if you will (I turned 30 last week so please forgive the thoughts of legacies and midlife crises that are sure to follow for the next little while). Anyway this isn't the tree in question but it shows another of my favourites which I'd love to see planted more often; especially in the suburbs where trees which are suitably small but gorgeous are depressingly rare. This is the Daimyo oak, Quercus dentata.

quercus dentata 2

As you can see it makes a relatively small, dense, mopheaded little oak tree. What makes it particularly special are these leaves.

quercus dentata 1

Thick and leathery, they dry stiff when dead and stay on the tree for much of winter coloured a rich golden brown. The really significant thing about these bad boys though is their size.

quercus dentata 3

Again that is my, perfectly normally sized, hand for scale.

3 comments:

Khamil.C said...

god, it's really beautiful tree, I'm sad coz I can't plant that kind of tree in my country :(

amarlow said...

Beautiful, ain't it?

I'm researching & planning the trees I want to plant on my (currently vacant, ~4.5 hectare) property. Quercus is already present, tho not in large number, so is on the list of ones I want to search out.

I am curious: how old is the tree in the photo? And am I right... you are growing these in the Caribbean?

Thanks,
~Allen

tai haku said...

Hi Allen

The tree in the photo was maybe 10 years old-ish I'd guess when that was taken.

These are growing in Lincolnshire in England. I'm guessing you're somewhere in the USA in which case in addition to this one (which is wonderful if you can find it) there are some fabulous native oaks (including some nice small shrub ones) which are great for wildlife (but then you also have all those wonderful Carya and Juglans species too as well as Asimina and all sorts of other cool trees to pick from!