"_Essex Broad Oak_" (Vol. v., p. 10.).--In "the Forest," two or three
miles from Bishop Stortford, is the ruin of an old oak, from which the
parish no doubt takes its name of Hatfield Broad Oak. There is a print
of this tree in Arthur Young's _Survey of Essex_.
If the rural readers of "N. & Q." will observe whether the finest
specimens of oaks have their acorns growing, on long or short stalks
(_quercus sessiliflora_ or _pedunculata_), they might throw much light
on the questions, Have we two distinct English oaks? and, if so, Which
makes the largest and best timber? The timber used inside old buildings,
and erroneously often called chesnut, is supposed to be the sessiliflora
variety of oak, placed inside because it is not so durable as the
quercus pedunculata. But I have been lately informed this variety is in
Sussex selected, as the best, for Portsmouth Dockyard!
In the year 1783 my grandfather first drew attention to the two
varieties of English oaks, in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, p. 653. He was
brother of Gilbert White of Selborne, and an equally acute observer of
Nature. Loudon, in his _Arboretum_, has collected much information, but
has left the question pretty much where it was seventy years since.
Surely it is time we knew precisely what is the tree of which our wooden
walls are made.