The Humboldt Oak

The thickest trunk in Berlin does not belong to the city's oldest tree. It belongs to its neighbour. A few hundred metres from Dicke Marie, inside the grounds of Schloss Tegel, this pedunculate oak has swollen to 7.80 metres around, wider than Dicke Marie despite being younger by centuries: 400 to 500 years old rather than 800 or more. It takes its name from the same family who has owned Schloss Tegel since 1766 and still does today, one of the few noble German estates that never left its original bloodline. Alexander von Humboldt, the naturalist whose name later ended up on a university, an ocean current and a squid, grew up walking past this oak on his way to the lake. Berlin listed it as a natural monument in 1939, protecting a crown that now spans 18 metres, wide enough to shade a tennis court. The palace itself only opens to visitors on Mondays between May and September, but the park around it, this tree included, stays open year round until sunset, for a suggested one euro donation left at the gate. Stand under it and you are looking at more wood, by circumference, than anywhere else in the German capital, a record that has nothing to do with age at all.