Fast forward slightly less than a year, and I was lucky enough to have a meet-up with these three lovely ladies, Elizabeth, Alison and Nikki-Marianna.
Nikki-Marianna had a bagful of Holm Oak acorns, and here is her story.
I bought the holm oak nuts from a market trader in Essaouira, Morocco in January 2019, from a barrow similar to this.
Why did I buy them - because I couldn't identify what they were!!! I knew they were a nut of some sort, but they were far too elongated to be an acorn although the colour was right. I took them back to the hotel and asked the receptionist what they were, in my best French/Spanish/English mix with lots of hand gestures, as he did not speak English, though he is learning English and wishes to teach it one day. Eventually with the intermittent help of Google translate (wifi signal was not good!) he found the translation of Holm Oak. He demonstrated to me that you can peel and eat them raw, they were very hard and slightly bitter in taste. He told me that the Moroccans boil and mash the nuts / acorns and eat them as a vegetable.
I mislaid the bag that I put the acorns in and only found them again at the bottom of my suitcase after I returned to the uk. and never got around to cooking them! Instead I planned on planting them in a local woodland and when we had a Silver Sister Hampshire Meetup at the beginning of March, I took a few of the acorns with me to show my sisters. Each of them chose to take an acorn home.
So, I took my acorn home with me and planted it (this before I covered it with soil).
That was just under three months ago, and here it is now (along with another "ordinary" oak sapling from an acorn collected in Theydon Bois, and 4 fig tree cuttings from my garden).
Thank you Nikki-Marianna for the acorn and the history of how you came about it. From now on I'll post monthly updates towards the end of each month.