Quercus hispanica Lam.

When Lamarck (1785) described Quercus hispanica he listed three varieties, all from plants cultivated in the Jardin royal de Trianon at Versailles. The first he called ‘the Gibraltar oak’. This was said to be found around Gibraltar and made a more beautiful tree than the cork oak (Q. suber) with somewhat similar bark. The second, ‘the oak with Aegylops leaves’, was apparently from a tree given by French botanist Jussieu said to have come from Spain – Vazquez Pardo et al. (2018) regard this as Q. faginea. The third he called ‘Le Chêne turnère’. This was raised in England before 1780 and was named Q. × turneri by Willdenow in 1809 from a tree in Berlin. Judging from a specimen in the Lamarck herbarium, the tree he referred to was not ‘Pseudoturneri’ but was very similar to the Berlin tree and to ‘Spencer Turner’.

Therefore Q. hispanica, as described, consisted of three different taxa. Cristofolini et al. (2017) lectotypified the name with the specimen of the Gibraltar oak. The identity of this is currently uncertain, but it could be a hybrid between Q. cerris and Q. suber.

For plants commonly grown under this name see Q. × crenata.