Talk:Royal Oak

Son of?
Is it really called "Son of Royal Oak" anywhere but here? It seems conventional in UK English to use the mother/daughter paradigm when writing about trees, although oaks do of course bear flowers of both sexes. Sjwells53 (talk) 17:11, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Species identification
I've posted close-ups of the acorns of daughter trees on the quercus robur discussion page to solicit identification. They don't look like English Oak acorns to me, but Sessile Oak or Welsh Oak. I've been planting acorns from the Jubilee oak in compost today, and they were clearly carried in cups growing straight out of the twigs, not on long stems. I wish I could get a better photo of those on the parent tree. However, the Jubilee and Tercentenary Oaks are well-attested first-generation descendants and should be good enough. I'm not sure what the evidence for the implied identification is. The sources all just seem to call it an oak. Sjwells53 (talk) 17:11, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

"pollarded"?
 The king and Careless took some food and drink and they spent all day hiding in a pollarded oak tree which became known as the Royal Oak.

I question the description of the tree as pollarded, is it backed in the citation to Antonia Fraser's biography of Charles II? A pollarded tree would surely have offered insufficient concealment in daytime for two grown men (the King himself grew to 6 feet 2 inches tall) hiding from searching Roundhead troops? Depictions - albeit artistic impressions made years after event - normally show the oak tree in full foliage before the autumn leaf shedding would have set in. Neither the articles on Escape of Charles II and Boscobel House give the description. Cloptonson (talk) 19:28, 2 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Fraser, p. 151, "In those days the tree was a large and particularly bushy pollard oak". Pollarding can increase the number of small branches arising from main boughs, so making the foliage denser.Urselius (talk) 11:33, 3 March 2023 (UTC)