Nobody has managed to measure this oak properly, and the reason is livestock. It stands alone in a grazed meadow at the corner where Zijpendaalseweg meets Sonsbeekweg, and the field is often closed off with electric wire to keep the animals in, which the national register notes, with a trace of irritation, makes coming back with a tape difficult. So its file records the shape of the tree and not its girth. The shape is the argument anyway. This is an oak grown in the open with nothing competing for its light, so the branches went out rather than up, and the register calls it the first tree that catches the eye of anyone walking from the city centre up into Park Sonsbeek. It works as the park's doorman. Its planting band is 1840 to 1850, which puts it at about 180 years and makes it the youngest of the four Sonsbeek oaks on this list, though nothing about standing under it suggests youth. You can see it and reach it from the path at the corner; whether you get to the trunk depends on where the wire is that week. Free, no gate, about twenty minutes on foot from the station. The register is the only source that has written this one down, so treat 1840 to 1850 as one authority's estimate rather than a settled date.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
Park Sonsbeek, at the corner of Zijpendaalseweg and Sonsbeekweg, Arnhem
You can recognise it by branches gone out rather than up, an oak grown alone with nothing competing for its light. It stands in a grazed meadow, often closed off with electric wire, at the corner of Zijpendaalseweg and Sonsbeekweg.
Free, public park, open daily; the tree stands in a grazed meadow that park managers sometimes fence with electric wire to keep livestock inside, which the register itself notes makes remeasuring it awkward, but the tree is visible and reachable from the roadside path at the corner
Park Sonsbeek, at the Zijpendaalseweg/Sonsbeekweg corner; about a 20 minute walk from Arnhem Centraal station
In fruit
September to October: acorns drop, and a good mast year buries the ground in them
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
- In the official register: Landelijk Register Monumentale Bomen (Bomenstichting), no. 1692814
- Landelijk Register Monumentale Bomen v2024 (LRMB), Bomenstichting (nr 1692814)
- services-eu1.arcgis.com