What is the oldest tree in Assen?
The oldest tree in Assen is the Hollow Oak of Overcingel, a pedunculate oak the national tree register bands to 1750-1800, roughly 225 to 275 years old. It grows on the private Overcingel estate off Oostersingel, its trunk opened on the north side by a cavity where sulfur fungus has been feeding for decades.
Ages here come from the Landelijk Register Monumentale Bomen, which records a planting decade rather than a year, so every figure on this page is a band rather than a measurement. The register is the single source for all nine trees, so every entry ships flagged rather than confirmed, and a second source would sharpen these ages if one turns up. Three of the nine, the horse chestnut, the hollow oak and the broken cypress, stand together on Overcingel, a private estate landscaped in 1824 and free to walk with a card from Het Drentse Landschap's Assen office, or without one during the February and March crocus season. Two more, a weeping beech and a copper beech, share a pocket garden behind a house called Nieuw Echten, reached through a footpath between two front doors on Alteveerstraat. The rest stand on public ground: a deer park, a former manor's grounds now open as Valkenstijn, and a former hospital site along Beilerstraat. Where a pin is marked approximate, we know the site and not the exact trunk.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.