Klopstocks Eg

Denmark protected this oak by law in 1956 and still cannot date it within four centuries. The Danish Dendrological Society's register gives 800 years as a maximum rather than an estimate, which is a different kind of number: the most the tree could be, not the best guess at what it is. So the range here runs from 400 to 800 years, and nobody has narrowed it. What has been measured: 6.05 metres round, 1.93 metres through, alive at the last field report. A storm in 2013 broke off a large branch and the tree carried on without further loss. The name belongs to Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, the German poet who came to Denmark in 1751 at the invitation of Frederik V, stayed twenty years, and spent his summers at Gramlille on Lyngby Hovedgade, a short walk from here. Nothing is recorded about what he did under this particular tree. It carries his name the way a street does, by association with the neighbourhood he lived in. It has also been called Monrads Eg, after D.G. Monrad. A memorial plaque went up in 1984. The oak stands right beside Prinsessestien, a public path through Lyngby Aamose in the Molleaadalen valley, about 12 km northwest of Copenhagen and a quarter of an hour on foot from Sorgenfri station.