A forester's core sample in 1982 counted 1,637 rings in this oak, which puts its germination around 345, in the twilight of the Roman Balkans, and makes it Bulgaria's oldest recorded tree.
Ancient trees in Bulgaria
Bulgaria's oldest tree is not its most impressive one to look at anymore. This page maps 6 remarkable trees across 3 cities in Bulgaria, each one researched and verified. The oldest of them is The Granit Oak (Granitski dab) in Granit, at about 1,680 years.
A 1982 core sample counted 1,637 rings in the Granit Oak, dating its germination to around 345 and giving Bulgaria a tree age nobody has to guess at, but a 1969 storm and falling groundwater have since reduced it to a single living branch. Higher up, in Pirin National Park above Bansko, Baikushev's Pine carries a gentler kind of age claim: tradition holds it was already standing when Khan Asparuh founded the First Bulgarian Empire around 681, a repeated figure of about 1,300 years rather than a measured one. Sofia supplies the political history in between, a mulberry linked to national hero Vasil Levski, an oak named for the poet Pencho Slaveykov, a spruce planted for Ivan Vazov. Three cities mapped so far, six trees, from a dying record-holder to a living tradition.
Every mapped city in Bulgaria
1Sofia4 trees · oldest 300-500+ years (disputed)2Bansko1 tree · oldest about 1,300 years3Granit1 tree · oldest about 1,680 years
5 species grow in Bulgaria
Oaks Pedunculate Oak 2
Figs and mulberries White Mulberry 1
Conifers Bosnian Pine 1 · Norway Spruce 1
More broadleaf trees Gray Poplar 1
The oldest tree mapped in Bulgaria
See every city on the map, or open the map to find what is near you.