The Queen's Oak of the Englischer Garten

Queen Elizabeth II planted this oak herself, on 27 May 1965, on her first visit to West Berlin. The sapling was reportedly raised from stock at Windsor Castle. Almost nothing else on this map arrives with its planter, its provenance and its exact date all written down. What she put in the ground was an American tree. Quercus rubra, the Northern Red Oak, is neither British nor German, and it has taken to the Tiergarten well: roughly twenty metres now, with a crown that has come up lopsided rather than round. It went into a divided city and has spent most of its life in a reunited one, which is more history than sixty-one years usually buys. By oak standards it is barely started. Finding it is the part that takes effort. Neither newspaper account gives a coordinate, and there is no register entry to fall back on, because this one was never listed as a natural monument. Both accounts put it near the white Teehaus, and the more recent is precise about the last few metres: to the right of the path, on the way down to the pond. That is as close as anyone has written it down, which is why the pin here points at the teahouse rather than at the trunk. Nobody has taped its girth either. If you stand in front of it, tell us where you were standing.