The Hungarian Oak of Park Zijpendaal

The national register calls this the tallest Hungarian oak ever measured in the Netherlands, and, so far, in Europe. That is the register's own claim rather than a settled record: it is the only body that has published a measurement of this tree, and nobody else appears to have put up a rival figure. The lean is easier to check than the height. For most of its life the oak stood hemmed in on its western side by tall beeches, and it did what a crowded tree does. It went east, away from the competition, and set its whole frame at an angle. The beeches have gone now. The register notes fresh growth filling in on the west side of the crown, a tree quietly rebuilding the half of itself it was never allowed to have. Hungarian oak is a southeast European species, a long way from home on the middle-west side of a Gelderland park. This one went into the ground between 1900 and 1910, which makes it old enough to have stood through the occupation and through the fighting that wrecked much of Arnhem in 1944. Park Zijpendaal is open every day and costs nothing. The register is our only source here, so treat the superlative as theirs. If you have a photograph of this oak from before the beeches came down, we would like to see it.