How many leaves on a big oak tree? Well, how big is big? And does it matter? Anyway, a reference to Thomas Pakenham's book in a review quotes him as writing that a big oak or beech produces each year a new, crop of some 100,000. Paul Johnson, in his International Book of Trees, writes: "a big oak has some 250,000 leaves." Neither suggests that their figure is the optimum. They both tell us that large trees of these species are hugely prolific. And there are the miles and miles of twigs and branches and the tons and tons of water pumped.
Anyway, just for the hell of it, as a casual experiment an attempt is being made to count the leaves of an oaks which still is holding probably more than half of its leaves early in December. An enormous number of those falling have been hurled away beyond ken by recent gales. There are scattered piles driven deep into shrubberies add rockeries and other corners not so far away. In other words, the count is starting a bit too late to be anything more than a rough guide for next year. Starting too late for even approximate accuracy, this is how it works.
The leaves are raked from the grass and from the drive and open space around. They are piled into a smallish barrow. One such load has been counted in this way. First, one thousand leaves were taken out of the barrow, one by one. Then a container was found which held the thousand exactly to the top. From there, the rest of the barrow load was measured, thousand by thousand, the container filled to the top. You may say that some leaves were bigger than others, you may have other viewpoints, but the barrowload of leaves contained just over six thousand leaves by this method.
Already some seven barrowloads' had been deposited on a heap, so eight loads of six thousand odd brings us halfway, more or less, to one estimate of 100,000 as a reasonable number for a big oak. It may be that the leaves already carried away, the leaves still lodged in ditches and odd corners would bring us near the 100,000 already.
But, weather and patience permitting, it is just possible that by calculation, and by guess and by God, even Johnson's quarter million could be passed. It's a lot of raking up. Maybe just let them rot away into mulch? And yes, you can be heard: "It's little enough he has to do."