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The Lady Oak

Quick Notes about the Lady Oak Take me here now

Make sure your volume is on: "Some of the limbs are over a hundred years old"

Show transcript

We are standing under the mighty Lady Oak. Very impressive large oak tree. Estimates of age, I believe could be anywhere up to four or five hundred years old. [Some of the limbs are over a hundred]. We’re looking at a base girth of about 1.5 metres. Some of the branches look nearly a metre wide.

It’s a very open grown tree, so it’s not had to compete for light at all so it’s put branches out in every direction. Which is classic parkland oak. Capability Brown planted oaks so they could just grow out to where they want.

This is the sort of tree you can imagine a young prince sitting in, or a princess [You’re getting all romantic now!] or a swing underneath.

It’s the sort of tree that you see on the Crown Estate in the Great Park. Same as the other one for wildlife, you’ve got so many nooks and crannies and different things on it, it is brilliant for wildlife.

The standing deadwood – so the deadwood is left on the tree so it doesn’t get wet, it doesn’t take the moisture from the ground. - which is beneficial for many invertebrates. Whereas if the tree was on the ground it is soaking up the moisture and you would have different invertebrates. So we have a bit of both within the park, we let some stay on the tree and some stay on the ground, and that way we’ve got a better variety of biodiversity.

And they tend not to drop. They get hardened by the sun and they go rock hard and they just stay there.

Hence why they have been used for building for hundreds of years.

 The Facts

Tree Type: The Lady Oak is an example of an English Oak that has grown to extremely large size. Because it has never been pollarded (had its limbs cut off) it is called a 'maiden oak' - and because of its age the 'maiden' has become 'lady'. It loses its leaves in the winter, so is a deciduous tree.

Location: The oak family of trees are very widespread across Europe and the western parts of Russia. 

Ecology: Although these maiden trees grow to a great age, many of the largest of them were cut down in previous centuries to build ships and rooves and other structures requiring long and sturdy beams. The trees which have survived are often local celebrities, and protected from being felled. 

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The Legends

Landscape architects such as Capability Brown loved to plant oak trees in places where they could really grow and spread, although they would never get to see the mature trees in their own lifetimes.

The latin name of the tree is Quercus robur - the 'robur' meaning 'hard' or 'durable'

The age of the Lady Oak is not known, but is probably about 400 to 500 years. But it is not polite to ask a lady for her exact age!

Although huge, this is not the oldest oak in England. That title probably belongs to the Majesty Oak in Fredville Park in Kent. Another ancient oak is the Major Oak in the Sherwood Forest, which legend says was used by Robin Hood, and was voted 'Britain's Favourite Tree' in 2002.

This page is part of TREE TRAIL