3. The Robertson Oak
My third post features an historic Scottish oak tree in the Perthshire tourist centre of Pitlochry.
Welcome to The Street Tree! This is the third in a series of pithy illustrated posts about great individual trees from Britain and Ireland. I’ll be posting at least one a week over the coming months.
Follow your nose to the Robertson Oak, an old tree which ignominiously now finds itself next to Pitlochry's sewage works. Its name remembers George Robertson of Faskally, a Jacobite rebel who, fleeing south after defeat at Culloden, found the tree's canopy – presumably significant in 1746 – the ideal place to hide from pursuing Government troops. The story goes that he evaded capture and made good his escape to France, but other accounts have him back in Scotland only a few years later.
Species details
Sessile oak
Quercus petraea
Where to find it
Perth Road, Pitlochry PH16 5LY
///unhappy.plausible.argue | 56.697836, -3.7227870
Sessile oak notes
It is no surprise to find a sessile oak close to the water in Scotland. Of the two native oaks, the sessile is most often associated with the wetter west. While they are certainly more frequent in these places, they are found throughout Britain and Ireland, as are pedunculate oaks. Inevitably, where ranges of closely related plants crossover, hybridisation often occurs, and in Scotland, studies suggest that a significant proportion of oaks are hybrid.
