Quercus robur
species of plant
Quercus robur, pedunculate oak, European oak, or English oak, is a species of flowering plant in the beech and oak family, Fagaceae. It is a large tree, native to Europe and western Asia, and is widely cultivated in other temperate regions. It grows on soils of near neutral acidity in the lowlands and is notable for its value to natural ecosystems, supporting a diversity of herbivorous insects, acorn eating mammals and birds, and fungi.
The common name pedunculate oak refers to the acorns being borne on a peduncule, or stalk.
English oaks can live to very old ages, often growing for over 500 years, with some specimens believed to be over 1,000 years old They are characterised by thick and heavily fissured bark.
Description
Pedunculate oak is a deciduous tree, typically maturing at up to 20 m in height, and sometimes up to 40 metres (130 ft), with a single stout trunk typically reaching up to 4 m, sometimes exceeding 10 m (33 ft) in girth (circumference at breast height), or even reportedly 14 m in pollarded specimens. Older trees tend to be pollarded, with boles (the main trunk) about 3 m long. They often live longer and become more stout than unpollarded trees.
The crown is spreading and unevenly domed, and trees often have massive lower branches. The bark is greyish-brown and closely grooved, with vertical plates.
“Quercus robur” enters the record as species of plant. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Quercus, robur and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Quercus robur” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Quercus, robur and species provides the most credible route into that argument.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q165145. The Library of Congress control number is sh85043922. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
Scientific names, classifications and consensus can change while older terminology persists in catalogues and historical literature. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Quercus robur” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.