Cork oak

A short thick trunk, stripped orange low down, twisting up into crooked limbs, each with a round dark clump of leaves on its end and the boughs showing between.

About 6.5 m tall out in the open.

Where it grows

Land	How many of the trees
Shrubland	One in four

Trees of a kind keep together in stands about 60 m across.

Through the year

It leafs out in spring, its bare twigs budding green first. In autumn its leaves turn russet and bronze, each tree in its own time, then fall pixel by pixel until the crown is bare twigs. It stands bare through the winter. In the warm south, where it never grows cold, it keeps its leaves all year.

In play

Its trunk stops men and horses, who go round it. Wildfire leaves it black and bare, and burnt or felled ground grows back over about four years.