Toguchin It’s nice to see the great Red Oak of White Hill getting some press – it was mentioned in today’s Times blog. The tree – which they’re calling the “Robin Hood Oak” – fell in that storm that sent a tornado through Brooklyn in 2010 – was the most magnificent tree I have seen growing in city limits, and the most majestic red oak I’ve seen anywhere. Unfortunately no picture I have ever seen does the tree justice. It was not a terribly tall tree, and about six or seven feet up the bole was not amazing – probably about four feet in diameter – but the base of the tree was billowed out into a gnarly mess which was all age and grandeur. It amazed me when I was a child, but returning to it when older and having seen a lot more of the world’s trees, I was still impressed.
http://midequalitygroup.co.uk/events/list/?tribe-bar-date=2022-09-05 The tree was on our way to Forest Park, one of the great forests of the city and a playground of my youth. I rode my bike through the park as training for this Mississippi River trip. I have always regretted that I didn’t photograph and celebrate the tree properly while it was here – a well-staged photo or two would have made the tree famous in the city, as there were angles from which the tree seemed impossibly massive, dwarfing cars. My father always said that the hill above it was called “White Hill” because of the oak, which he claimed was a white oak. It was, in fact, a red oak, and I presume White Hill got its name some other way. But the tree certainly had been there before there were many named places in the area. My guess would be that it was a second-growth tree – there were farms all along Jamaica Avenue by the 17th century, and this oak was at the foot of the hill on superb ploughland – but it is quite likely that this tree grew at the very edge of a farmer’s field, perhaps right at the fenceline, before the city was even there.
I noted with pain that the city had failed to put a red oak in the same spot when the street was replanted. But they’ve rectified that now, planting a red oak found growing nearby in the old hole. Whether it is a direct descendant of the big tree – well, of course it could be, but it just as well might not be. The claim that there are no other red oaks nearby is absurd – the park is two hundred feet away and is almost a continuous stand of red oak – and blue jays can move acorns quite a distance. But all the red oaks in the area are probably cousins who have been interbreeding in the same area since time immemorial. And now a new one has a chance.
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