Page 170 - Demo

For a tree to have a proper name, it must be something special. And by all accounts, the Jupiter oak in France%u2019s Forest of Fontainebleau was exceptional. So much so, that several postcards were produced with its image.In his 1910 book, The Wonders of the Plant World, George Francis Scott Elliott said, %u201cThe Jupiter oak in the forest of Fontainebleau is supposed to be 700 years old.%u201d But that seems to have been an exaggeration, because when it died%u2014of starvation%u2014in 1993, the tree was determined to be about 650 years old.The Jupiter was a Sessile-Oak, Quercus petrea, which grew better than other more common oak varieties in the Fontainebleau%u2019s soil. It stood about 115 feet tall and had a circumference of 22 feet. With a long trunk, going up to 82 feet, its first branch was at 56 feet. While an ideal timber-tree for the forester, it was saved from harvesting until its eventual demise.