Fastigiata
Quercus robur
The record
- Parentage
- Quercus robur
- Origin
- A wild tree of dense, cypress-like habit in the forest at Haareshausen, near Babenhausen, south-east of Frankfurt · propagated by grafting around 1783
- Rights
- freely propagated — In cultivation since the eighteenth century, far outside the term of any plant patent. No IP claim found in the sources consulted.
- Form
- Columnar, maturing to a dense elongated oval; roughly 50 to 60 feet by 10 to 18
- Propagation
- Grafted, and also grown from seed — but seed-grown trees are not reliably true to form
Description
The oldest record in this file and the ancestor of half of it. A wild oak of dense, cypress-like habit growing in a German forest was propagated by grafting around 1783; a tree raised from it grew at Wilhelmshöhe near Cassel, and most of the fastigiate oaks in European cultivation are thought to descend from one or the other. The columnar habit in Crimson Spire and in both Ware’s oaks traces back here.
It is also the counterexample the modern entries need. Two and a half centuries in commerce, no patent, no mark, propagated by anyone who wants it — and it is still sold, because the trait it carries is genuinely good.
The seed caveat is the whole argument for clones in one line: fastigiate oaks raised from seed are variable and not reliably upright. That gap between what a seedling might be and what a graft certainly is, is what every patented cultivar in this file is sold to close.
Where to find it
No source recorded. That does not mean the cultivar is unavailable, only that this record does not yet name a nursery carrying it. Point us at one and it goes in.