The Hohenlind Oak

A hundred metres from the big plane in the Hohenlind hospital park stands a pedunculate oak, 3.75 metres round, on the same patch of former estate ground that predates the hospital by the better part of a century. The two trees make one short walk rather than two separate trips, both listed as natural monuments in Cologne's own designation register and both measured by the city on the same day in May 2018. The oak has no recorded age of its own, but the estate around it was already reckoned about 150 years old in a 1932 account, which puts at least some of its planting into the late 1700s, a fact about the park rather than a dated certificate for this particular trunk. A third registered tree, a second plane, stands nearby too, though without a published girth or coordinate to go with it, which is why it stays a lead rather than a fourth stop on this walk. The park belongs to St. Elisabeth-Krankenhaus, a hospital, and both the hospital and independent sources confirm the grounds stay open to the public in daytime hours. The building is not part of the visit; the trees around it are.