Englaenderegen

This oak was dying, and treasure hunters saved it by accident. Generations of digging around its roots broke up the packed soil and let air back in, which is what the Danish Dendrological Society's register credits with its recovery. Nobody was trying to help the tree. They were looking for a chest of money. The name, Englaenderegen, the Englishman's oak, comes from the British siege of Copenhagen in 1807. Two soldiers, tired of service, are said to have stolen their regiment's pay chest and buried it beside a freestanding oak northeast of the Hermitage. Neither came back for it, and one confessed on his deathbed to a priest. Searches followed for over a hundred years, including one made at the request of Queen Victoria, and nothing has ever been found. The chest is legend. The holes were real, and they are the part that mattered. The register measures the trunk at 5.46 metres round and 1.74 metres through, and dates it at 240 to 360 years using a growth formula applied to 1995 measurements, which puts it at roughly 270 to 390 now. It stands by the pond Magasindammen in Jaegersborg Dyrehave, the royal deer park north of Copenhagen, and the Nature Agency marks the site wheelchair accessible. Getting there is the long part: 35 to 40 minutes on foot from Klampenborg station, past Eremitageslottet.