New Zealand has lost its oldest oak in a wind storm. The English oak acorn was transported by a missionary in 1824. Richard Davis’ biography says he was known as a keen horticulturalist, planting many trees.
The English oak was transplanted to Waimate North around 1830, where it was noticed by Charles Darwin and Robert Fitzroy, a Navy officer and scientist who wrote, “Englishmen one now meets everywhere; but a living, healthy English Oak was a sight too rare, near the Antipodes, to fail in exciting emotion''.
At one point, the Waimate Oak survived a fire by being covered with damp blankets. The Evening Post in January 1926 reported another of the tree’s crisis’s, “When, nearly 20ft high, the tree had much of its lower bark destroyed by sheep which had been penned around it. Mr. Davis, in the hope of saving its life, cut it off about 3ft from the ground. It sprouted again, and is now rather over 50ft high, and the branches have a spread of over 60ft. The trunk, however, is only 7ft high, measuring 10ft 9in in girth.”