The Willem de Zwijger Oak of Prins Hendrikplein

An oak the size and thickness of trees three times its age stands in the enriched soil of what used to be a rose garden. Ninety-three years is a modest span for a tree on this list, yet this oak has reportedly grown thicker than veterans of 300 years at nearby Paleis Het Loo. It went into the ground on 24 April 1933, when Lily Roosmale Nepveu, the mayor's daughter, planted a young oak on Prins Hendrikplein to mark 400 years since the birth of William of Orange. The square's wrought-iron fence, designed by Pieter Puype, weaves the Nassau lion and the Orange hunting horn into a repeating figure-eight, and two of its stone posts are carved with the years 1533 and 1933. The sapling came from the nursery at Berg en Bos and travelled to the square by horse-drawn cart, decked out in orange for the occasion. Nobody has taped its girth, but whatever gave it such an unusually fast start (the old rose garden's soil is the leading theory) it now stands as a small, deliberate monument on an ordinary square: a tree planted for a royal birthday, thriving on ground somebody once tended for flowers.