OneOak 2010 prize winners

The winners of our 2010 OneOak competition visited the Blenheim woodland today to receive their prizes.

OneOak 2010 prize winners Jordan Le Roux and Cherie Ellis, with Martin Damen (left) and Nick Gibbs (right)

Would you know how much a whole oak tree weighs?  Over the summer the Sylva Foundation invited people to guess the weight of a massive oak tree, the OneOak tree felled in January this year, as part of their OneOak education project.

The prizes carved from the OneOak wood by Martin Damen

The OneOak tree was weighed by a team of scientists from Forest Research immediately after it was felled.  It took a team of six people from the Government research agency two days to weigh every stem, branch and twig.  The total weight (excluding roots) of the OneOak tree was 14.385 tonnes (14,385 kg).

The winning entry, just 277 kg away from the correct answer, was by amateur tree enthusiast Cherie Ellis from Buckinghamshire.  In second place was Tomas Thuresson, a forest scientist from Sweden.  Third place went to local school pupil Jordan Le Roux.

Today, the winners visited the woodland on the Blenheim Estate where the tree had once stood, to be presented with beautiful hand-carved wooden items made from the OneOak tree by local craftsman Martin Damen.  They were also presented with a year’s subscription to Living Woods magazine by Editor Nick Gibbs.