The most typical feature of many English landscapes, the English oak is also native to much of Europe as well as the near East and parts of North Africa. The two most familiar British species of oak, the Sessile and pedunculate types ( Quercus petraea and Quercus robur) have been valued for their timber, underwood and tanbark since at least neolithic times.
The oak also has a long pedigree in artistic representation, gathering powerful political iconographies through time. From the days of Robin Hood through to Shakespeare 's comedies and the English Civil War, the oak represented the struggle against oppression and tyranny, and the green oakwood offered an escape - both literal and symbolic - from the established values of society. In the century after 1700, as the Enclosures Acts concentrated land in the hands of fewer and more powerful landowners, oak iconography began to reflect the ideas of nationhood of this dominant grouping. Formerly a symbol of radical social resistance, the tree is transformed into a representation of an aristocratic status quo. In portraits of the landed elite, the aged, venerable oak is often deployed as a motif to symbolise the supposedly unbroken link of the landowner to his land, the apparently ancient lineage of the family: the contested legitimacy of the claim to ownership of land is given figurative power in the implied link between the ancient tree and the family. During this period, the tree is also used to represent national identity through the glorification of the 'hearts of oak' of the English Navy, a glory reflected back on the 'patriotic' landowners who provided the shipping timber by their mass planting of new forests. By the time of Modern Painters the oak remained a symbol both of landed interest and Englishness, and was gaining an enhanced nostalgic value since iron smelting and manufacture began in the eighteenth century to dominate the English economy, marginalising many of the oak-based industries of former centuries.
Ruskin refers to the oak more than any other tree, particularly in regard to artistic representation ( Works, 5.319; 6. 99; 7. 53; 12, 371; 14. 98; 15. 71, 144, 183), and architectural decoration ( Works, 1.184; 9. 372, 471; 10. 98, 111; 11. 10), but he rarely follows the traditional iconographic presentation of the species. In Modern Painters V, the oak is a principal element in Ruskin's botany, where the description of its growth also acts as a metaphor for building and social relations ( Works, 7.27-33, 42-46, 78-9, 98). Despite referring frequently to the oak, Ruskin finds many faults in the species: he shares the typical figuring of the oak as strong and dignified ( Works, 4.170; 5. 287; 10. 239), but also regards it as having a tendency to monstrous and inharmonious forms ( Works, 3.582; 15. 501). He repeatedly deconstructs the phrase 'hearts of oak' as a description of Englishness, implying that underlying weaknesses threatened the apparently massive strength both of an ancient, hollow oak tree and the expansionist English nation as it entered a new phase in its economic and political development ( Works, 6.450; 8. 135; 14. 281; 20. 380).
Ruskin also has an enduring interest in oak ecology, particularly in its impact on English scenery ( Works, 6.166, 304;7. 109; 11. 206; 29. 462; 35. 47), and refers to oaks many times in his diary entries.