The Lietzensee Plane

This plane added 43 centimetres to its waistline in ten years. Measured at chest height it went from 6.00 metres in 2015 to 6.43 metres in 2025, which by circumference makes it the sixth thickest tree on record anywhere in Berlin. A laser measurement in 2025 put its height at 22 metres. The date usually given for its planting is 1807, an estimate rather than a ring count. That would make it a sapling in an occupied city, the year after Napoleon's army marched through the Brandenburg Gate and took the Quadriga off the top of it to Paris. Everything around the tree arrived later. Lietzenseepark is a twentieth century arrangement of terraces and lakeside paths, laid out around trees that were already big when the surveyors turned up. Berlin protects it as a natural monument under the number 4-26/B, which is the city saying in administrative language that nobody touches this one. It was photographed alive and in full leaf in May 2025. The register keeps no age and no girth of its own, so both figures above come from the volunteer surveyors who have been measuring it every five years, which is also how anyone knows it is still growing. From here the shore path runs about 170 metres to a Caucasian wingnut, the other reason this lake is on the map.