European Oak

As strong as an oak. The popular saying reflexes graphically the nature of this powerful inhabitant of our forests, where it growths together with linden trees, hornbeams, birch trees and beech trees. It loves the light, can live 1200 years and reach a height of 60 metros. It is found in lands next to small hills and, in the low course of great rivers. Its wood is valuable, especially appreciated for shipbuilding, furniture, beams and barrels. It is said that a good wine needs to mature in nobility a good oak barrel. Due to its resistance to air pollution, it is often planted in the cities in parks and gardens.

It is a tree that existing from time immemorial has been linked to man and on which there are a lot of tradition and legends. The Greco-Roman culture saw it as the "original tree", from which it was believed the man was born.

Among the Greek it was consecrated to Zeus; then, when Rome took the western civilization and adapted most of their myths, it was consecrated to Jupiter.

In the north, among the Germanic people, it was the Donar tree, god of the ray and the storm. In the temple of Dodona in honor to Zeus, the oracle guesses the future, and it was through sacred oaks that predictions were announced. The legend says that Romulus built the temple of Jupiter. Later Romulus fought and killed Acron, son of Hercules, and took to Rome, as a trophy, the weapons of his enemy to put it on Capitoline hill, under a sacred old oak. Among the central European people the oak was most venerable tree, and not without a real fundament, because it is thought that its fruits should palliate times of shortage.

In the belief of peasants of several places of Europe, and even nowadays in England and Wales, there are still legends on the called fairy-like beings: fairies, gnomes, pixies, dwarves and other fantastic beings. One says that among the old oaks there are some of these elemental creatures. It is said that from a fallen oak, shoots will emerge and will multiply to form weeds surrounded by the oak dwellers. Such characters, annoyed for the loss of the head tree, will offer the naive mortals passing by, irresistible food, but in fact it is poisonous fungi disguised by magical arts... Nobody would criticize an excess of prudence.

"It is a large tree, 37m height, that lives 500 years and even, though rarely, 1.000; it has a big scattered top, with thick twisted branches that make it the best specie to get the curves necessary for shipbuilding and houses with wood structure. The leaves, of short petiole (3-7mm) and basal auricle, are frequently grouped. They are elongated, of 8-12cm long, of slightly wavy surface, with four or six pairs of rounded lobes. The flowers appear in the middle of spring, the male with green bunches and a hanging peduncle of 5-7,5cm long; the females on short erected peduncles over the male catkins, and the acorns, of 2-4cm long, generally by pairs, with peduncles of 3-7cm and not very deep cupule.

The demand of this excellent wooden tree exceeds the stock, and most forestry economists are not perspicacious enough to realize that in one hundred years the specie will be danger of extinction."

Encyclopedia BLUME, Trees, wood and forests of the world, H. Edlin/M.Nimmo, page 150.