It's all very well to drone on with the poet Dryden: "The monarch oak, the patriarch of trees,/Shoots rising up and spreads by slow degrees,/Three centuries he grows and three he stays,/ Supreme in state and in three more decays." This comes to mind as a traveller from Greece brought as a present 14 oaks - well 14 acorns which will, D.V., become trees. Not like Dryden's great vision of an oak, but the smallest of all, the Chermes oak or Quercus coccifera, and fascinating because it grows in this climate, but 20 years this gardener/treeman has brought on many of them yet has never had an acorn to stay on them - and is frustrated.
One hope: this bag of acorns of the species comes from Greece. Always before, the seed has been from various parts of southern France. Slightly different in appearance because, instead of turning brown, these Greek acorns have arrived here quite whole but black, definitely black. For years, in Ireland, little flat acorn cups have appeared but, watched every day, have one by one fallen.
Now, according to the books - Edlin's The Tree Key for one - it takes two years for an acorn of this species to form. So down go our acorns in September 2000. Give them about three years to grow into sturdy little things and then, when in about 2005 a tiny acorn begins to form, you have two more years to wait in triumph. Really, why do we addicts bother? Well, because the trees are lovely in themselves - they don't grow to more than three or four feet, their leaves are spiny, like miniature holly and smooth on both sides. They have been found only in rather scrubby land, sometimes just alongside the road in mountain areas.
Their leaves are host to a small insect, Kermes vermilio, which, when crushed, gives a brilliant red dye, and has been in use since Roman times. Must confess that neither in France nor in this country has such an insect been found on the leaves. Wrong time of the year, perhaps, or likely to be found in warmer climates, maybe down in Greece too? Doubt if our climate has ever seen the creature. Y