Growing an oak tree indoors - How to grow a miniature oak tree in a bottle

Have you not often admired the stately oak tree?
I will tell you, then, how you can grow a very interesting miniature oak in your window. In the autumn you can find beneath some oak multitudes of ripe acorns that have fallen amid the decaying leaves.
Select one that is large and well grown, and by means of a very stout needle run a strong thread through it so that the acorn will hang with the pointed end straight downward.

Excerpt from the book: "Our boys; what they can do and how to do it" by Stoddart, William, Publication date 1893 / Publisher New York, Hunt & Eaton; Cincinnati, Cranston & Curts

Take a short, wide-mouthed bottle and suspend the acorn in it, placing the two ends of the thread over the opposite sides of the neck and fastening them by wrapping a few turns of fine thread or string around the neck of the bottle and then knotting it securely.
Then pull upon the ends of the thread that runs through the acorn until it hangs fairly with the point downward in the center of the bottle. Now pour water in the bottle until it just touches the point of the acorn, but no more. Fig. 1 shows it. Cut a small piece of card, turn down the edges, and lay it over the mouth of the bottle. Now set the bottle and acorn in the window or on a bracket, and in a few days more or less, depending upon the warmth of the room, the shell will open at the point, and a long white root will grow downward into the water.
This root will go on elongating for weeks. In a state of nature this would become the tap root of the oak, but as it cannot escape from its glass prison it goes on coiling itself round and round the inner side of the glass until a foot or more is crowded in the bottle and small roots grow from its sides. In a short time the upper covering of the acorn will split and a little green stem will force its way out, bearing delicate little leaves of the brightest green.
The stem and leaves will grow with vigor, and an opening must be made in the card covering to allow the little oak to grow out in the open air.
Fig. 2 shows the tree.



This may all seem to be merely child's sport, but I assure you it will prove interesting for the older people as well.