What is the oldest tree in Brno?
Brno's oldest tree is probably The Old Town Gate Oak, the oak at the southern entrance to the Moravské náměstí park, which the city's own heritage encyclopedia records as more than 170 years old. Probably, because nobody has dated any of these trees precisely. The Czech national register of memorial trees gives each one a code, a species, a girth, a height and a position, and it has no age field at all, so every age on this page is an estimate from a city or tourism source rather than a measurement. On those estimates the oak comes first, ahead of a horse chestnut and a plane at around 160 years and the plane at St Anne's hospital at over 150. The plane on the corner of Benešova has no published age at all, which is why this page gives it none.
Brno's protected trees are documented twice over, which is why this page can be specific about trunks and vague about years. The Czech national register of memorial trees, kept by the AOPK, gives each a code, a species, a girth, a height and a position, several last updated in 2024, but no age. Local sources fill part of that gap with estimates and older measurements, which is why several girths appear as a range: the tape went round different trunks in different decades, or two sources simply disagree, as they do for the plane renamed after Professor Chudoba. All seven stand within about 1.1 kilometres of each other in and around the ring of parks laid out where the fortifications came down, and the furthest is twenty minutes on foot from the main station. Two carry an honest caveat beyond a measurement dispute. The plane at St Anne's stands on a working hospital campus rather than in a park, and the oak at the south end of Moravské náměstí has not been photographed by anyone we could find since 2015.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.