The Great Chestnut of Časta

Slovakia's largest sweet chestnut does not grow in a park or an arboretum. It stands out in the vineyards on the slope above Časta, roughly 500 years old, with a trunk that sources put at between 830 and 866 centimetres and a height somewhere between 23 and 25 metres. Take the conservative end of both figures and it is still more than eight metres round. Eight metres of chestnut is a particular sight. The species twists its bark into spiralling ridges as it ages, so an old trunk looks wrung out rather than smooth, and the biggest one in the country is where that is easiest to see. In October the spiny burrs come down and the ground underneath takes some walking across. It has been protected since the end of the 1990s, although the sources cannot agree whether the designation came in December 1997 or in 1998. A year either way makes little difference to a tree that was already four centuries old when the paperwork began. Getting there involves a walk, which is part of the point. Časta lies about 34 kilometres from Bratislava, reached by regional bus from Pezinok or Modra, and the tree is uphill from the village in open vineyard ground. Nothing is fenced, nothing is ticketed, and the view back down the slope comes free with it.