The Adoption Oak of Amerongen

Louis XIV's army burned Kasteel Amerongen to the ground in 1673, and when the castle was rebuilt a few years later, somebody planted an oak in the new park. Three and a half centuries on it is a fixture of the grounds in a way the rebuilt castle, for all its history, cannot quite manage: buildings get restored, this tree just kept growing. Bomenbieb dates the planting to around 1680, close enough behind the castle's reconstruction that the two are usually mentioned in the same breath, though no source claims the tree was planted to mark the rebuilding specifically. The girth is recorded at 5.9 metres. Height is where sources start to disagree: bomenbieb says 35 metres, other measurements found put it at 32, a small enough gap that it is recorded here rather than resolved. In 1987 the Dutch Tree Foundation formally adopted it, one of the marks of official recognition this site treats as evidence a tree matters beyond its own park. A regional heritage map of the Utrechtse Heuvelrug separately lists a landmark oak at the same address under a different name, De eenzame eik, the lonely oak, almost certainly the same tree remembered under two names by two different record-keepers. It stands in the castle's own park, on a ticket bought separately from the museum, open Thursday to Sunday.