Several enquiries from SNS members about an unusual Oak tree in Christchurch Park, Ipswich have been passed on to me after a small piece appeared in a recent issue of Ipswich Angle. The tree in question is at the top of a slope with a slide behind the Mansion, just before you get to the fenced-in children's play area, but unfortunately it is not the extremely rare hybrid Quercus x audleyensis (Q. ilex x petraea) as reported -this identification was made by Alan Mitchell during a visit in the late 1980s, however, a year or so later I began to have doubts when the tree produced a good crop of well developed acorns and all the ones I planted germinated, something the reference books indicated should not happen for the true hybrid as its acorns, if they do develop at all, are infertile. I took a sample down to the Harold Hillier Arboretum which maintains the National Collection of Oaks and their head botanist Allen Coombes (also UK representative of the International Oak Society) identified it as Quercus pubescens from southern Europe which does have particularly variable foliage and the spreading habit that made the Angle's report of branch pruning necessary -not such a rare species but none the less not one likely to be frequently encountered in even many of the larger gardens, though it is well suited to our dry East Anglian climate and one of the UK's biggest specimens is at Ickworth House near Bury St.Edmunds. I eventually obtained some samples from the original Q. x audleyensis, still growing at Audley End near Saffron Walden in Essex and material was also sent to Allen Coombes for grafting to add to their collection.
Several enquiries from SNS members about an unusual Oak tree in Christchurch Park, Ipswich have been passed on to me after a small piece appeared in a recent issue of Ipswich Angle. The tree in question is at the top of a slope with a slide behind the Mansion, just before you get to the fenced-in children's play area, but unfortunately it is not the extremely rare hybrid Quercus x audleyensis (Q. ilex x petraea) as reported -this identification was made by Alan Mitchell during a visit in the late 1980s, however, a year or so later I began to have doubts when the tree produced a good crop of well developed acorns and all the ones I planted germinated, something the reference books indicated should not happen for the true hybrid as its acorns, if they do develop at all, are infertile. I took a sample down to the Harold Hillier Arboretum which maintains the National Collection of Oaks and their head botanist Allen Coombes (also UK representative of the International Oak Society) identified it as Quercus pubescens from southern Europe which does have particularly variable foliage and the spreading habit that made the Angle's report of branch pruning necessary -not such a rare species but none the less not one likely to be frequently encountered in even many of the larger gardens, though it is well suited to our dry East Anglian climate and one of the UK's biggest specimens is at Ickworth House near Bury St.Edmunds. I eventually obtained some samples from the original Q. x audleyensis, still growing at Audley End near Saffron Walden in Essex and material was also sent to Allen Coombes for grafting to add to their collection.
Daniel Sanford
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